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Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings
Although his work has been restricted to the short story, the essay, and poetry, Jorge Luis Borges of Argentina is recognized all over the world as one of the most original and significant figures in modern literature. In his preface, Andre Maurois writes: "Borges is a great writer who has composed only little essays or short narratives. Yet they suffice for us to call him great because of their wonderful intelligence, their wealth of invention, and their tight, almost mathematical style."
Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn from various books of his published over the years. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan, and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography.
Labyrinths is a representative selection of Borges' writing, some forty pieces drawn from various books of his published over the years. The translations are by Harriet de Onis, Anthony Kerrigan, and others, including the editors, who have provided a biographical and critical introduction, as well as an extensive bibliography.
260 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1962
About the author
Jorge Luis Borges
1,805 books12.8k followersJorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo was an Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator regarded as a key figure in Spanish-language and international literature. His best-known works, Ficciones (transl. Fictions) and El Aleph (transl. The Aleph), published in the 1940s, are collections of short stories exploring motifs such as dreams, labyrinths, chance, infinity, archives, mirrors, fictional writers and mythology. Borges's works have contributed to philosophical literature and the fantasy genre, and have had a major influence on the magic realist movement in 20th century Latin American literature.
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."
Born in Buenos Aires, Borges later moved with his family to Switzerland in 1914, where he studied at the Collège de Genève. The family travelled widely in Europe, including Spain. On his return to Argentina in 1921, Borges began publishing his poems and essays in surrealist literary journals. He also worked as a librarian and public lecturer. In 1955, he was appointed director of the National Public Library and professor of English Literature at the University of Buenos Aires. He became completely blind by the age of 55. Scholars have suggested that his progressive blindness helped him to create innovative literary symbols through imagination. By the 1960s, his work was translated and published widely in the United States and Europe. Borges himself was fluent in several languages.
In 1961, he came to international attention when he received the first Formentor Prize, which he shared with Samuel Beckett. In 1971, he won the Jerusalem Prize. His international reputation was consolidated in the 1960s, aided by the growing number of English translations, the Latin American Boom, and by the success of Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. He dedicated his final work, The Conspirators, to the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Writer and essayist J.M. Coetzee said of him: "He, more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish-American novelists."
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August 2, 2021
(Book 441 From 1001 Books) - Labyrinths: Selected Stories & Other Writings, Jorge Luis Borges
Labyrinths (1962) is a collection of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges.
It includes "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Garden of Forking Paths", and "The Library of Babel", three of Borges' most famous stories.
Many of the stories are from the collections Ficciones (1944) and El Aleph (1949).
هزارتوهای بورخس - خورخه لوئیس بورخس (کتاب زمان) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش سال 2006میلادی
عنوان: هزارتوهای بورخس؛ نویسنده: خورخه لوئیس بورخس؛ مترجم احمد میرعلایی؛ تهران، کتاب زمان، 1356، در 259ص؛ چاپ دیگر سوئد، افسانه، 1369؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، کتاب زمان، 1380، در 296ص؛ شابک 9646380166؛ چاپ دیگر با حروفچینی متفاوت 1381؛ در 296ص، شابک ایکس - 964638028؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه و نوشته ها و شعر شاعران آرژانتین - امریکای لاتین - سده 20م
نقل از بورخس: حکمت وداع: (کم کم تفاوتِ ظریفِ میان نگه داشتن یک دست، و زنجیرکردن یک روح را، یاد خواهی گرفت، اینکه عشق تکیه کردن نیست، و رفاقت اطمینان خاطر، و یاد می‌گیری که بوسه ها قرارداد نیستند، و هدیه ها، عهد و پیمان معنی نمی‌دهند، و شکست‌هایت را خواهی پذیرفت، و سرت را بالا خواهی گرفت، با چشمان باز، با ظرافتی زنانه، و نه اندوهی کودکانه، و یاد می‌گیری که همه راه‌هایت را هم امروز بسازی، که خاک فردا برای خیال‌ها مطمئن نیست، و آینده، امکانی برای سقوط به میانه ی نزاع، در خود دارد.؛ کم کم یاد می‌گیری، که حتی نور خورشید می‌سوزاند، اگر زیاد آفتاب بگیری. پس باغ خود را می‌کاری، و روحت را زینت می‌دهی، به جای اینکه منتظر کسی باشی، تا برایت گل بیاورد، و یاد می‌گیری، که می‌توانی تحمل کنی، که محکم هستی، که خیلی می‌ارزی، و می‌آموزی و می‌آموزی، با هر خداحافظی، یاد می‌گیری)؛ پایان نقل از خورخه لوییس بورخس
به برهان ناآشنائیم به فرهنگی که، «بورخس» از آن مینالد، و ساز خویش نیز، هماره نیز خوش مینوازند، استعاره های ایشان را کمتر درمییابم، برای همین است شاید، با اینکه از خوانش و خواندن چندباره اش، لذتها برده ام، نمیدانم چرا؟ میخواهم بازهم کتاب را بخوانم؛ شاید بفهمم چه میگویند؛ روانشاد «گلشیری: (1316 - 1379هجری خورشیدی)» که آخرین افزوده را بر کتاب بنوشته اند، از خود میپرسند: «راستی نکند که بورخس، محصول رویای پدر کور خود باشد»؟ شاید هم به شیوه ی «بورخس»، بشود گفت: (آنکه در باره ی «بورخس» مینویسد، بیشتر در مورد خود، یا آثار خود مینویسد)؛
پس بگذارید دیدگاه خویش را نیز بنگارم، در باره ی متن نوشتارهای «خورخه»: چه احساس زیبائی، وابستگی هماره، هماورد آزادی است؛ عشق در برابر رهایی است؛ اما گویا، تنها گنجشککان اینگونه اند، هم را دوست میدارند، ولی طرف را هرگزی بندی نمیکنند؛ برهانش اینکه، آنگاه که از چیزی خوشت آمد، دلت میخواهد از آن تو باشد؛ دیگر او آزاد نیست؛ وقتی آزاد نیست، برایتان ارزشی ندارد، کس، برای به دست آوردنش، با شما نمیجنگد؛ معادن را برای یافتنش نمیکاود؛ دریاها را در جستجوی او، درنمینوردد؛ از برای صیدش، به ژرفای آبهای شور و شیرین، و گرم و سرد، سرک نمیکشد؛ مرواریدی که در موزه به تماشای دیگران گذاشته شده، هرگزی ارزش واقعی خود را، نمینمایاند؛ اما آنگاه که درون صدف خویش است، و در قعر دریا تنها، آزاد، و از آن خود است، و مالکی ندارد، چندین غواص، برایش، نفس در سینه حبس میکنند، جانها بهای اوست؛
کلام «خورخه»، اوج شناخت حق دیگریست؛ باید، سدی نبست، حتی به رود خشک نیز؛ وگرنه دیگر، چشمه های زلال، جاری، نیلگون، و فیروزه ای نخواهد ماند، و بود؛ آسمان را گویا از ایشان گرفته باشید، دیگر درخت بید، موی خود را، با تماشا در آب جاری، شانه نمیکند؛ از پا خواهد افتاد، و برکه ای خواهد شد، تا سمور آبی، شاید در آن به گشت و گذار بپردازد، و لانه بنا کند؛ واژه ی دوست، شاید از «دو تا است» برگزیده شده باشد، یعنی دو متفاوت، و وابسته در بعضی از خواهشها به هم، البته که به دلخواه هر دو؛ آیا ما نیز چنینیم؟ «خورخه» بسیار ظریف اندیشیده، و دیده است؛ عشق را همراهی دیده؛ اگر هدیه ای هم باشد، باید بدون مناسبت و دلخواه هدیه دهنده و گیرنده، باشد؛ البته که بدون انتظار پرسش و پاسخ؛ نه آن بندی که با آن هدیه، گوئیا ناخواسته شاید، به پای دیگری میبندیم؛ باید باغ خویشتن را خود بکاریم، و روحمان را، زینت همان باغ خویش کنیم، تا گردشگران، همچون خرده های آهن به سوی آهن ربایش، به سوی زیبائی چنان و چنین روحی، گرد آیند؛ تهران ا. شربیانی
Apr 26, 2008
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
Labyrinths (1962) is a collection of short stories and essays by Jorge Luis Borges.
It includes "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", "The Garden of Forking Paths", and "The Library of Babel", three of Borges' most famous stories.
Many of the stories are from the collections Ficciones (1944) and El Aleph (1949).
هزارتوهای بورخس - خورخه لوئیس بورخس (کتاب زمان) ادبیات؛ تاریخ نخستین خوانش سال 2006میلادی
عنوان: هزارتوهای بورخس؛ نویسنده: خورخه لوئیس بورخس؛ مترجم احمد میرعلایی؛ تهران، کتاب زمان، 1356، در 259ص؛ چاپ دیگر سوئد، افسانه، 1369؛ چاپ دیگر تهران، کتاب زمان، 1380، در 296ص؛ شابک 9646380166؛ چاپ دیگر با حروفچینی متفاوت 1381؛ در 296ص، شابک ایکس - 964638028؛ موضوع داستانهای کوتاه و نوشته ها و شعر شاعران آرژانتین - امریکای لاتین - سده 20م
نقل از بورخس: حکمت وداع: (کم کم تفاوتِ ظریفِ میان نگه داشتن یک دست، و زنجیرکردن یک روح را، یاد خواهی گرفت، اینکه عشق تکیه کردن نیست، و رفاقت اطمینان خاطر، و یاد می‌گیری که بوسه ها قرارداد نیستند، و هدیه ها، عهد و پیمان معنی نمی‌دهند، و شکست‌هایت را خواهی پذیرفت، و سرت را بالا خواهی گرفت، با چشمان باز، با ظرافتی زنانه، و نه اندوهی کودکانه، و یاد می‌گیری که همه راه‌هایت را هم امروز بسازی، که خاک فردا برای خیال‌ها مطمئن نیست، و آینده، امکانی برای سقوط به میانه ی نزاع، در خود دارد.؛ کم کم یاد می‌گیری، که حتی نور خورشید می‌سوزاند، اگر زیاد آفتاب بگیری. پس باغ خود را می‌کاری، و روحت را زینت می‌دهی، به جای اینکه منتظر کسی باشی، تا برایت گل بیاورد، و یاد می‌گیری، که می‌توانی تحمل کنی، که محکم هستی، که خیلی می‌ارزی، و می‌آموزی و می‌آموزی، با هر خداحافظی، یاد می‌گیری)؛ پایان نقل از خورخه لوییس بورخس
به برهان ناآشنائیم به فرهنگی که، «بورخس» از آن مینالد، و ساز خویش نیز، هماره نیز خوش مینوازند، استعاره های ایشان را کمتر درمییابم، برای همین است شاید، با اینکه از خوانش و خواندن چندباره اش، لذتها برده ام، نمیدانم چرا؟ میخواهم بازهم کتاب را بخوانم؛ شاید بفهمم چه میگویند؛ روانشاد «گلشیری: (1316 - 1379هجری خورشیدی)» که آخرین افزوده را بر کتاب بنوشته اند، از خود میپرسند: «راستی نکند که بورخس، محصول رویای پدر کور خود باشد»؟ شاید هم به شیوه ی «بورخس»، بشود گفت: (آنکه در باره ی «بورخس» مینویسد، بیشتر در مورد خود، یا آثار خود مینویسد)؛
پس بگذارید دیدگاه خویش را نیز بنگارم، در باره ی متن نوشتارهای «خورخه»: چه احساس زیبائی، وابستگی هماره، هماورد آزادی است؛ عشق در برابر رهایی است؛ اما گویا، تنها گنجشککان اینگونه اند، هم را دوست میدارند، ولی طرف را هرگزی بندی نمیکنند؛ برهانش اینکه، آنگاه که از چیزی خوشت آمد، دلت میخواهد از آن تو باشد؛ دیگر او آزاد نیست؛ وقتی آزاد نیست، برایتان ارزشی ندارد، کس، برای به دست آوردنش، با شما نمیجنگد؛ معادن را برای یافتنش نمیکاود؛ دریاها را در جستجوی او، درنمینوردد؛ از برای صیدش، به ژرفای آبهای شور و شیرین، و گرم و سرد، سرک نمیکشد؛ مرواریدی که در موزه به تماشای دیگران گذاشته شده، هرگزی ارزش واقعی خود را، نمینمایاند؛ اما آنگاه که درون صدف خویش است، و در قعر دریا تنها، آزاد، و از آن خود است، و مالکی ندارد، چندین غواص، برایش، نفس در سینه حبس میکنند، جانها بهای اوست؛
کلام «خورخه»، اوج شناخت حق دیگریست؛ باید، سدی نبست، حتی به رود خشک نیز؛ وگرنه دیگر، چشمه های زلال، جاری، نیلگون، و فیروزه ای نخواهد ماند، و بود؛ آسمان را گویا از ایشان گرفته باشید، دیگر درخت بید، موی خود را، با تماشا در آب جاری، شانه نمیکند؛ از پا خواهد افتاد، و برکه ای خواهد شد، تا سمور آبی، شاید در آن به گشت و گذار بپردازد، و لانه بنا کند؛ واژه ی دوست، شاید از «دو تا است» برگزیده شده باشد، یعنی دو متفاوت، و وابسته در بعضی از خواهشها به هم، البته که به دلخواه هر دو؛ آیا ما نیز چنینیم؟ «خورخه» بسیار ظریف اندیشیده، و دیده است؛ عشق را همراهی دیده؛ اگر هدیه ای هم باشد، باید بدون مناسبت و دلخواه هدیه دهنده و گیرنده، باشد؛ البته که بدون انتظار پرسش و پاسخ؛ نه آن بندی که با آن هدیه، گوئیا ناخواسته شاید، به پای دیگری میبندیم؛ باید باغ خویشتن را خود بکاریم، و روحمان را، زینت همان باغ خویش کنیم، تا گردشگران، همچون خرده های آهن به سوی آهن ربایش، به سوی زیبائی چنان و چنین روحی، گرد آیند؛ تهران ا. شربیانی
Apr 26, 2008
تاریخ بهنگام رسانی 27/05/1399هجری خورشیدی؛ 10/05/1400هجری خورشیدی؛ ا. شربیانی
January 4, 2020
"You who read me, are You sure of understanding my language?"
Borges would have been the first to point out that an answer in the affirmative to his own question would be a likely sign that the reader indeed had understood nothing of any importance. So I won't make any claims. I did however experience something approaching perfect reading pleasure, - fully aware that perfection is unlikely to be approved by Borges - being too static, unchangeable, and definitive.
Halfway through the essay collection, I became acutely conscious of knowing the stories already, but I was not able to recall whether I had read them before, or just heard about them in other essay collections. It left me in the dreamlike, surreal state of mind that Borges enjoys evoking - blurring the lines between reality and literature, proving over and over again that storytelling is the origin of humankind as a thinking species.
Are we real? Or are we just part of a giant narrative, told in infinite volumes of books in a labyrinthine library which contains us, the universe and all our imagination, including our deities?
Moving from one fictional character to the next (Don Quixote, Hamlet, Dante in his fictional self) and questioning our right to claim more authenticity than these immortal characters, Borges involves his own identity as a person and as a writer in the narrative process, and makes a distinction between what Borges - the person - and Borges - the writer of mythical dimensions - represents, without being sure where one identity ends and the other begins:
"I do not know which of us has written this page."
Why are readers confused when they realise that characters in books turn into readers of the same book, like Don Quixote in the second part of the Cervantes' masterpiece? - Borges claims it disturbs our sense of reality. We might be part of a story ourselves, a story about a character reading about reading, and reflecting on how to establish an objective identity.
If our universe is a great labyrinthine library containing all the stories of the world, then time and space are meaningless measurements of life. We can be in different stories at the same time, and change pattern, plot and character in case we are not happy with the thread we are following at the moment:
"Next time I kill you", replied Scharlach, "I promise you that labyrinth, consisting of a single line which is invisible and unceasing."
Why did I like this collection so much? Why did it give me such a deep, deep sense of satisfaction, despite being obscure, incoherent, and slightly surreal?
I think the answer is that to me, the world is a library, and Borges gave me the narrative to prove that my reading and dreaming self is just as real as the self that is busy with everyday chores. I have always felt at home in books in a way that I rarely feel at home in the world.
Within Borges' labyrinth, I found my true home address.
Moving from Dante and Kafka over Shakespeare to Cervantes feels natural and logical to me, and I gather that I am among old friends. I identify strongly with the idea of seeing the world as an infinite number of story fragments, all available to be reinterpreted by me, the reader. I am part of the story as well, changing the narrative with my existence in time, just like Borges himself:
"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."
I was Borges too, for a short time, while I read his words. And it swept me away!
Borges would have been the first to point out that an answer in the affirmative to his own question would be a likely sign that the reader indeed had understood nothing of any importance. So I won't make any claims. I did however experience something approaching perfect reading pleasure, - fully aware that perfection is unlikely to be approved by Borges - being too static, unchangeable, and definitive.
Halfway through the essay collection, I became acutely conscious of knowing the stories already, but I was not able to recall whether I had read them before, or just heard about them in other essay collections. It left me in the dreamlike, surreal state of mind that Borges enjoys evoking - blurring the lines between reality and literature, proving over and over again that storytelling is the origin of humankind as a thinking species.
Are we real? Or are we just part of a giant narrative, told in infinite volumes of books in a labyrinthine library which contains us, the universe and all our imagination, including our deities?
Moving from one fictional character to the next (Don Quixote, Hamlet, Dante in his fictional self) and questioning our right to claim more authenticity than these immortal characters, Borges involves his own identity as a person and as a writer in the narrative process, and makes a distinction between what Borges - the person - and Borges - the writer of mythical dimensions - represents, without being sure where one identity ends and the other begins:
"I do not know which of us has written this page."
Why are readers confused when they realise that characters in books turn into readers of the same book, like Don Quixote in the second part of the Cervantes' masterpiece? - Borges claims it disturbs our sense of reality. We might be part of a story ourselves, a story about a character reading about reading, and reflecting on how to establish an objective identity.
If our universe is a great labyrinthine library containing all the stories of the world, then time and space are meaningless measurements of life. We can be in different stories at the same time, and change pattern, plot and character in case we are not happy with the thread we are following at the moment:
"Next time I kill you", replied Scharlach, "I promise you that labyrinth, consisting of a single line which is invisible and unceasing."
Why did I like this collection so much? Why did it give me such a deep, deep sense of satisfaction, despite being obscure, incoherent, and slightly surreal?
I think the answer is that to me, the world is a library, and Borges gave me the narrative to prove that my reading and dreaming self is just as real as the self that is busy with everyday chores. I have always felt at home in books in a way that I rarely feel at home in the world.
Within Borges' labyrinth, I found my true home address.
Moving from Dante and Kafka over Shakespeare to Cervantes feels natural and logical to me, and I gather that I am among old friends. I identify strongly with the idea of seeing the world as an infinite number of story fragments, all available to be reinterpreted by me, the reader. I am part of the story as well, changing the narrative with my existence in time, just like Borges himself:
"Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges."
I was Borges too, for a short time, while I read his words. And it swept me away!
September 15, 2018
why haven't i read borges before?? no one knows. and he was always pushed upon me - "how can you like marquez if you haven't read borges??" "you like donoso - you should read borges." "machado is good, but you should read borges." so - fine - i did. and i am utterly underwhelmed. so there. i am learning during my "summer of classix" that most of the books i have for some reason or another overlooked were probably overlooked for a reason. i naturally gravitate towards what i like - and i seem to have a filter that prevents me from picking up too many books i don't. when i force it, this happens. and i liked some of the stories. but borges isn't for everyone (although scrolling down my "friends who have read" list, it looks as though all my friends gave it five stars.) and i'm not accusing you bitches of inflating your ratings, but i have the sense with borges that some people are guilted into liking him. or pretending that they like him more than they do because he's borges. but i won't be. because i am not ashamed of my intellectual shortcomings. i embrace them. i am incapable of abstract thought. fact. as hard as i try, that whole achilles/tortoise thing? does not compute. so all of this hexagon spiraling into hexagon on top of hexagon... i feel like i am back in college (where every single person i ever knew had a copy of this book. and was a stoner.)but this is classic stoner thinking-chains. reflections, labyrinths, it's perfect for that kind of mindset. "dooood, imagine we were in a hexagon right now??" and i know this makes sense to some people with philosophical and theological mindbents, but for me its almost pain. there were about 6 stories i liked, but the first few almost made me weep with trying to find the value in them. sorry, borges. we were never meant to be.
mmmmkay - it seems that there are those who think it would be valuable "in a book review" to list the stories i did like. so: the shape of the sword, theme of the traitor and the hero, death and the compass, the secret miracle, three versions of judas, story of the warrior and the captive, emma zunz, the house of asterion, and the waiting. more than i thought i liked, but still - a sad minority.
come to my blog!
mmmmkay - it seems that there are those who think it would be valuable "in a book review" to list the stories i did like. so: the shape of the sword, theme of the traitor and the hero, death and the compass, the secret miracle, three versions of judas, story of the warrior and the captive, emma zunz, the house of asterion, and the waiting. more than i thought i liked, but still - a sad minority.
come to my blog!
November 21, 2016
The stories, essays and parables in this Borges collection, with all their esoteric references to multiple histories, cultures and literatures, are no more likely to appeal to a casual reader then a textbook on cognitive psychology. To extract literary gold from highly intricate, complex works like The Garden of Forking Paths, Emma Zunz, The Library of Babel or The Zahir requires careful multiple readings as well as a willingness to occasionally investigate terms and references, for example here are several from The Zahir: The Book of Rites, Isaac Laquendem, The Nibelungen, the novel Confessions of a Thug, The Book of Things Unknown.
And, speaking of The Zahir, if I were to move from referring to the tale itself to the ideas which lie behind it, how would my review read? What does it mean for a narrator to dissolve the universe into a single coin? Why does Borges describe, right at the outset, how at different times in the past the Zahir, a coin he was handed in a bar, morphed into a tiger, a blind man, a small compass, a vein in the marble of a pillar, the bottom of a well? How does one compress all time into this one sentence I am now writing? And what of the philosophical and cultural context in which Borges wrote this tale? Could a first-person short-story like The Zahir have been written in Ancient China? Medieval Persia? Colonial America? These are questions that lie outside the framework of this Borges tale. Or do they?
Philosophical musing on the reality of the Zahir propels Borges (and us as readers) to multiple worlds: of a woman who seeks to makes every one of her actions correct to the point where she desires the absolute in the momentary; the dark light of the Gnostics; a dream where he, Borges the narrarator, becomes a pile of coins guarded by a gryphon. Then, after Borges’ fascination with the Zahir slides into obsession, driving him to seek out a psychiatrist, he writes, “Time, which softens memories, only makes the memory of the Zahir sharper. First I could see the face of it, then the reverse; now I can see both sides at once. It is not as though the Zahir were made of glass, since one side is not superimposed upon the other; rather it is as though the vision were spherical and the Zahir flutters in the center.”
Such refection bring to mind Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game, where the beads are, in fact, made of glass and can represent, in turn, cosmic topology, a fugue of celestial spheres, variations on relational placement as in the colors and lines of a Mondrian or circles with plasticity in Vasarely; only the Zahir has about it more unity then plurality, and thus one Möbius strip, one musical note, one painting, one print. Toward the very end we read: “Others will dream that I am mad, while I dream of the Zahir. When every person on earth thinks, day and night of the Zahir, which will be dream and which reality, the earth or the Zahir?”
Regarding the essays, Partial Magic in the Quixote opens us to a least a dozen unique angles in our approach to this Spanish classic; Kafka and His Precursors explores the connection of writers like Kierkegaard and Browning along with Zeno’s paradox to the famous author of The Metamorphosis; The Mirror of Enigmas delves into conundrums such as the symbolic significance of Sacred Scriptures and various forms of metaphysical writings as reflected on by, among others, Philo of Alexandria. Seven more essays will bend and stretch you mind in ways you never thought possible.
In the parable, Borges and I, the author conducts a dialogue with himself as well as, take your pick - author, public persona, alter ego, younger self, older self, second self – and is uncertain as he concludes his parable who exactly is the author of the lines he has just written. Everything and Nothing is a parable featuring Shakespeare with a multiple identity crisis; another parable, The Witness, has the narrator brooding over memory and death and yet in another parable, Inferno 1,32, we encounter a leopard, Dante, and God in what could be viewed as a dreamscape.
Reading Labyrinths years ago, I was inspired to write this micro-fiction as a tribute to Jorge Luis Borges:
LIFE STORY
The bold letters on the cover read: Harold Blackman – Life Story. The book looks quite ordinary. One is required to make a special inspection to see a queer spring-like device along the spine. Harold Blackman opens the book before him. The title page is completely blank as are all the pages. He runs gnarled fingers, tips calloused and slightly trembling, lightly over this ghost of a title page and reflects on the long agonizing nights when he tried to pen the fire of his youth and the spume of his manhood without success. What he saw when the ink dried always left him feeling flat, unsettled. Closing his eyes, he repeats an incantation learned from a half-crazed Argentine, then opens them slowly, very slowly. Harold Blackman, weary adventurer, is now standing on the writing table, shrunken to the size of the book. Lying down on the title page, the back of his legs, buttocks and backbone relax to the paper’s slight give. He released a catch on the spine, the leather cover snapping shut with the vengeance of a mousetrap. But for a muffled groan all is silence. Over time, the blood seeps through the pages, forming, words, sentences, paragraphs.
April 16, 2018
دو بورخس
فكر كنم بايد بورخس رو دو بخش كرد. يك بورخس، بورخس "گاچو"هاست: گاوچران هاى امريكاى لاتين، و داستان هاى افسانه اى كه مردم راجع به بى رحمى و چاقوكشى و مردانگى و بى باكى اون ها ساختن. چیزی شبيه به لوطى هاى خودمون.
هر چند اين بورخس هم از عناصر جادويى توى داستان هاى گاوچران ها استفاده مى كنه (مثل اين كه روح چاقوكش هاى بزرگ در دشنه هاشون حلول مى كنه و بعد از مرگشون همچنان از طريق دشنه ها به خونريزى ادامه ميدن) اما اين عناصر محدودن، و داستان ها حول محور گاوچران ها و دوئل هاشون و دشمنی ها و عشق های افسانه ای شون مى چرخن و از فضاى امريكاى لاتين بيرون نميرن.
داستان هاى نصف اول كتاب، اغلب توى اين فضا هستن. و به خاطر تكرارى شدن سوژه هاشون ممكنه حوصله رو سر ببرن. من مدت ها قبل كه اين كتاب رو خوندم، به خاطر همين عدم جذّابيت و تكرارى شدن سوژه ها، كتاب رو نيمه كاره رها كردم، و حالا توى ريويوها ديدم كه بعضى از دوستان ديگه هم همين طور كتاب رو نصفه رها كردن.
بورخس گاوچران ها دوست داشتنى هست، ولى اگه كار داستان نويسى ش رو به همين محدود مى كرد، فكر كنم هيچ وقت آوازه ش از كشورهاى لاتين فراتر نمى رفت.
بورخس هزارتوها
بورخس دوم، بورخس "هزارتو"هاست: داستان هایی غریب از شرق، جادوگری، عرفان، منطق الطیر عطار، هندوستان، عارفان قرون وسطا، کیمیاگری، و بیشتر از همه هزارتوها. دیگه کمتر اثری از آمریکای لاتین توی داستان ها هست، و داستان ها بیشتر و بیشتر رنگ و بوی اسطوره های بی زمان و بی مکان می گیرن. و جالب این که این بورخس دوم همزمان با شروع نابینایی بورخس، به دنیا اومد. انگار هر چی چشم ظاهریش به روی اینجا و اکنون بسته تر می شد، چشم درونیش به لامکان و لازمان بازتر می شد.
این که چرا بورخسِ گاچوها، به بورخسِ هزارتوها تبدیل می شه، ریشه ش در کودکی بورخسه، که در کتابخونۀ قدیمی و بزرگ پدرش سپری شد. بورخس در مصاحبۀ آخر کتاب تعریف می کنه که چطور ساعت های متمادی در این کتابخونه می مونده و کتاب های قدیمی رو می خونده، از جمله هزار و یک شب که تخیل کودکانه ش ر�� سحر کرده بود. بورخس می گه: حالا که فکر می کنم من هنوز روحم توی همون کتابخونه باقی مونده و همچنان دست از خوندن کتاب های اون کتابخونه نکشیدم.
اولین داستانی که بورخس رو از دنیای گاچوها درآورد و به دنیای هزارتوها وارد کرد، داستان "تقرّب به درگاه المعتصم" بود. بورخس این داستان رو در ۱۹۳۵ وقتی سی و شش ساله بود نوشت. تمام داستان در حقیقت "ریویو"ی یک رمان هندیه، که وجود خارجی نداره. هر چند لحن مقاله-مانند داستان، رفرنس ها و بحث های محققانۀ بورخس راجع به چاپ های مختلف رمان، باعث میشه خواننده فکر کنه که در حال خوندن یه مقاله است راجع به یه رمان واقعی.
هم انتخاب سوژه (جادو، عرفان و شرق) و هم سبک (داستان-مقاله) بعدها، مخصوصاً بعد از نابینایی، به شکل اصلی داستان های بورخس تبدیل شد، و بورخس رو از یه نویسندۀ محلّی که آرژانتینی ها و شاید حداکثر مردم آمریکای جنوبی می تونستن با داستان هاش ارتباط برقرار کنن، به یه نویسندۀ بدون مرز تبدیل کرد که هر کسی که دغدغۀ ابدیت داشته باشه، می تونه توی داستان های رؤیامانندش غرق بشه، یا به عبارتی که خود بورخس بیشتر می پسنده: توی هزارتوهاش گم بشه.
فكر كنم بايد بورخس رو دو بخش كرد. يك بورخس، بورخس "گاچو"هاست: گاوچران هاى امريكاى لاتين، و داستان هاى افسانه اى كه مردم راجع به بى رحمى و چاقوكشى و مردانگى و بى باكى اون ها ساختن. چیزی شبيه به لوطى هاى خودمون.
هر چند اين بورخس هم از عناصر جادويى توى داستان هاى گاوچران ها استفاده مى كنه (مثل اين كه روح چاقوكش هاى بزرگ در دشنه هاشون حلول مى كنه و بعد از مرگشون همچنان از طريق دشنه ها به خونريزى ادامه ميدن) اما اين عناصر محدودن، و داستان ها حول محور گاوچران ها و دوئل هاشون و دشمنی ها و عشق های افسانه ای شون مى چرخن و از فضاى امريكاى لاتين بيرون نميرن.
داستان هاى نصف اول كتاب، اغلب توى اين فضا هستن. و به خاطر تكرارى شدن سوژه هاشون ممكنه حوصله رو سر ببرن. من مدت ها قبل كه اين كتاب رو خوندم، به خاطر همين عدم جذّابيت و تكرارى شدن سوژه ها، كتاب رو نيمه كاره رها كردم، و حالا توى ريويوها ديدم كه بعضى از دوستان ديگه هم همين طور كتاب رو نصفه رها كردن.
بورخس گاوچران ها دوست داشتنى هست، ولى اگه كار داستان نويسى ش رو به همين محدود مى كرد، فكر كنم هيچ وقت آوازه ش از كشورهاى لاتين فراتر نمى رفت.
بورخس هزارتوها
بورخس دوم، بورخس "هزارتو"هاست: داستان هایی غریب از شرق، جادوگری، عرفان، منطق الطیر عطار، هندوستان، عارفان قرون وسطا، کیمیاگری، و بیشتر از همه هزارتوها. دیگه کمتر اثری از آمریکای لاتین توی داستان ها هست، و داستان ها بیشتر و بیشتر رنگ و بوی اسطوره های بی زمان و بی مکان می گیرن. و جالب این که این بورخس دوم همزمان با شروع نابینایی بورخس، به دنیا اومد. انگار هر چی چشم ظاهریش به روی اینجا و اکنون بسته تر می شد، چشم درونیش به لامکان و لازمان بازتر می شد.
این که چرا بورخسِ گاچوها، به بورخسِ هزارتوها تبدیل می شه، ریشه ش در کودکی بورخسه، که در کتابخونۀ قدیمی و بزرگ پدرش سپری شد. بورخس در مصاحبۀ آخر کتاب تعریف می کنه که چطور ساعت های متمادی در این کتابخونه می مونده و کتاب های قدیمی رو می خونده، از جمله هزار و یک شب که تخیل کودکانه ش ر�� سحر کرده بود. بورخس می گه: حالا که فکر می کنم من هنوز روحم توی همون کتابخونه باقی مونده و همچنان دست از خوندن کتاب های اون کتابخونه نکشیدم.
اولین داستانی که بورخس رو از دنیای گاچوها درآورد و به دنیای هزارتوها وارد کرد، داستان "تقرّب به درگاه المعتصم" بود. بورخس این داستان رو در ۱۹۳۵ وقتی سی و شش ساله بود نوشت. تمام داستان در حقیقت "ریویو"ی یک رمان هندیه، که وجود خارجی نداره. هر چند لحن مقاله-مانند داستان، رفرنس ها و بحث های محققانۀ بورخس راجع به چاپ های مختلف رمان، باعث میشه خواننده فکر کنه که در حال خوندن یه مقاله است راجع به یه رمان واقعی.
هم انتخاب سوژه (جادو، عرفان و شرق) و هم سبک (داستان-مقاله) بعدها، مخصوصاً بعد از نابینایی، به شکل اصلی داستان های بورخس تبدیل شد، و بورخس رو از یه نویسندۀ محلّی که آرژانتینی ها و شاید حداکثر مردم آمریکای جنوبی می تونستن با داستان هاش ارتباط برقرار کنن، به یه نویسندۀ بدون مرز تبدیل کرد که هر کسی که دغدغۀ ابدیت داشته باشه، می تونه توی داستان های رؤیامانندش غرق بشه، یا به عبارتی که خود بورخس بیشتر می پسنده: توی هزارتوهاش گم بشه.
August 11, 2016
A university professor had once expounded on the supposed conflict between history and literature, the former bemoaning the irrelevance of the latter when it comes to tracing the contours of reality while the latter countering this accusation by deploying the well-known defense of 'there's no one way of looking at the truth'.
Indeed. Why restrict ourselves to just the one way and the one reality? Why overlook the truth of infinite permutations and combinations of each eventuality and each one of them, in turn, forking off into myriad possibilities ad infinitum? Why seek neat compartmentalization of two disparate disciplines and prevent their intermingling to create new streams of thought? Why believe mathematics and literature to be so fundamentally apart that there can be no blending together of both without the results being distorted beyond intelligibility?
The very fact that the known limits of what's considered intelligible are being breached every moment, has its roots in the reluctance of labyrinthine minds like Borges' to follow linear pathways.
Mysticism, mathematics, arcana, philosophy, and literary criticism. A perfect blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction leading to the creation of an entirely new entity which challenges the normative narrative form. And a moment of perfect lucidity arising out of a churning of all these elements. Where our imaginations come to a staggering halt, Borges' begins.
I do not wish to squeeze out every last drop of meaning from these complex interpolations of a known truth into discrete bits of hitherto unknown logical conclusions by googling every reference I did not get. Instead I delight in Borges' perfectly synchronized demolition of all and any conventions associated with writing with an authorial preeminence, I gaze enthralled at the vision of clarity being birthed out of pure chaos.
I let my mind latch onto his even if for a little while and let it guide me into realms where only the divinity of thought reigns supreme in its many manifestations.
And, for now, that is enough.
__
P.S.:-It's good to know where DFW acquired his irksome yet awe-inspiring footnoting habit from.
Indeed. Why restrict ourselves to just the one way and the one reality? Why overlook the truth of infinite permutations and combinations of each eventuality and each one of them, in turn, forking off into myriad possibilities ad infinitum? Why seek neat compartmentalization of two disparate disciplines and prevent their intermingling to create new streams of thought? Why believe mathematics and literature to be so fundamentally apart that there can be no blending together of both without the results being distorted beyond intelligibility?
The very fact that the known limits of what's considered intelligible are being breached every moment, has its roots in the reluctance of labyrinthine minds like Borges' to follow linear pathways.
Mysticism, mathematics, arcana, philosophy, and literary criticism. A perfect blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction leading to the creation of an entirely new entity which challenges the normative narrative form. And a moment of perfect lucidity arising out of a churning of all these elements. Where our imaginations come to a staggering halt, Borges' begins.
I do not wish to squeeze out every last drop of meaning from these complex interpolations of a known truth into discrete bits of hitherto unknown logical conclusions by googling every reference I did not get. Instead I delight in Borges' perfectly synchronized demolition of all and any conventions associated with writing with an authorial preeminence, I gaze enthralled at the vision of clarity being birthed out of pure chaos.
"In a birdless dawn the magician saw the concentric blaze close round the walls. For a moment, he thought of taking refuge in the river, but then he knew that death was coming to crown his old age and absolve him of labors. He walked into the shreds of flame. But they did not bite into his flesh, they caressed him and engulfed him without heat or combustion. With relief, with humiliation, with terror, he understood that he too was a mere appearance, dreamt by another."
I let my mind latch onto his even if for a little while and let it guide me into realms where only the divinity of thought reigns supreme in its many manifestations.
And, for now, that is enough.
__
P.S.:-It's good to know where DFW acquired his irksome yet awe-inspiring footnoting habit from.
March 8, 2015
On his religious views, Borges declared himself as an agnostic, clarifying: "Being an agnostic means all things are possible, even God, even the Holy Trinity. This world is so strange that anything may happen, or may not happen"*
It feels kind of strange to quote this after my initial brush with “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins where he refutes an agnostic stance vis-à-vis an atheist one. But I find myself adhering here with Borges. Why to rob an already incomprehensible world of its myriad probabilities?
Perhaps it is not relevant to quote this here with regard to “Labyrinths” which is a distinct work in itself and can be taken as “fantastical literature” encompassing the unimagined. However there also appear to be an underline theme running discreetly for most of the stories in this collection.
Attracted by metaphysics, but accepting no system as true, Borges makes out of all of them a game for the mind. He discovers two tendencies in himself: "one to esteem religious and philosophical ideas for their aesthetic value, and even for what is magical or marvelous in their content. That is perhaps the indication of an essential skepticism. The other is to suppose in advance that the quantity of fables or metaphors of which man's imagination is capable is limited, but that this small number of inventions can be everything to everyone."
These lines from the preface to the work by André Maurois elaborates Borges’ agnostic stand and present to us a glimpse into the author’s mind which seemingly wants to exhaust all the possibilities available to him by using them in different combinations to come to the point that anything is possible. Working with the concept of time and space, myths and dreams Borges continuously constructs labyrinthine worlds whose contemplation is left to the imagination of the reader.
He seems to be postulating that man (also mind, the world or Universe) exists as an infinite entity whose centre is everywhere (an individual), whose circumference is nowhere (existing in infinite series of time). There are numerous references in the work which propose this.
According to André Maurois, Borges sets out to hunt the following metaphor, regarding infinity, through the centuries:
Pascal wrote: "Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere."
And so from an enchanted mind, inspired by the possibility of fiction as reality and vice-versa, is created an array of dreamlike worlds for the readers where readers continuously keep drifting from the boundaries of one to another dazed by the magical images appearing infinitely.
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
------------------------------------------------------
* Source: Wikipedia
It feels kind of strange to quote this after my initial brush with “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins where he refutes an agnostic stance vis-à-vis an atheist one. But I find myself adhering here with Borges. Why to rob an already incomprehensible world of its myriad probabilities?
Perhaps it is not relevant to quote this here with regard to “Labyrinths” which is a distinct work in itself and can be taken as “fantastical literature” encompassing the unimagined. However there also appear to be an underline theme running discreetly for most of the stories in this collection.
Attracted by metaphysics, but accepting no system as true, Borges makes out of all of them a game for the mind. He discovers two tendencies in himself: "one to esteem religious and philosophical ideas for their aesthetic value, and even for what is magical or marvelous in their content. That is perhaps the indication of an essential skepticism. The other is to suppose in advance that the quantity of fables or metaphors of which man's imagination is capable is limited, but that this small number of inventions can be everything to everyone."
These lines from the preface to the work by André Maurois elaborates Borges’ agnostic stand and present to us a glimpse into the author’s mind which seemingly wants to exhaust all the possibilities available to him by using them in different combinations to come to the point that anything is possible. Working with the concept of time and space, myths and dreams Borges continuously constructs labyrinthine worlds whose contemplation is left to the imagination of the reader.
He seems to be postulating that man (also mind, the world or Universe) exists as an infinite entity whose centre is everywhere (an individual), whose circumference is nowhere (existing in infinite series of time). There are numerous references in the work which propose this.
According to André Maurois, Borges sets out to hunt the following metaphor, regarding infinity, through the centuries:
Pascal wrote: "Nature is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere, whose circumference is nowhere."
And so from an enchanted mind, inspired by the possibility of fiction as reality and vice-versa, is created an array of dreamlike worlds for the readers where readers continuously keep drifting from the boundaries of one to another dazed by the magical images appearing infinitely.
No one is anyone, one single immortal man is all men. Like Cornelius Agrippa, I am god, I am hero, I am philosopher, I am demon and I am world, which is a tedious way of saying that I do not exist.
------------------------------------------------------
* Source: Wikipedia
April 21, 2018
بورخس یک جادوگر تمام‌عیار است. این را من نمی‌گویم. همین که کتاب را شروع کنید، او را می‌بینید که با لباس جادوگری و چوب‌دستی‌اش پشت داستان‌ها ایستاده و دارد جادو میکند. من مطمئنم که بورخس هم از طرفداران واقعی هزارویک شب است. او بعضی داستان‌ها را از روی دست شهرزاد نوشته و می‌شود او را از نوادگان شهرزاد دانست. شاید برای من همین کافی باشد که به کتابی که هزارویک شب جد و نیای آن حساب می‌شود پنج ستاره بدهم اما هزارتوهای بورخس چیزی بیش از این است. جهان داستان‌هایش اساطیری، مرموز، باستانی، رمزآمیز و آمیخته با جادوست. اینکه کلمه‌ی جادو را زیاد تکرار میکنم همه‌اش به خاطر دنیایی است که تازه از آن آمده‌ام و هنوز تا گردوغبار جادویی داستان‌ها را از خودم بتکانم ورد زبانم همین لغت است. بعضی از شخصیت‌ها انگار اسم اعظم و یا رمز کائنات همین لحظه سر زبان‌شان بوده اما لحظه‌ای بعد آن را فراموش کرده‌اند، بعضی‌هایشان قصه‌هایی از سفر در زمان را دارند و طوری از این اتفاق صحبت میکنند که هر آدم معمولی از خاطره‌ی مسافرتش. هر چند که فراموشی هم مضمونی گره خورده به این هزارتوهاست، ما یکبار تا ته دنیا رفته‌ایم انگار، همه‌ی چیزهای نامک��وف را کشف کرده‌ایم، همه‌ی علوم را دانسته‌ایم، راز خلقت را دریافته‌ایم، معمای هستی را هم حل کرده‌ایم اما کمی بعد همه‌چیز از یادمان رفته چون ما فراموشکاریم و دنیا بر مدار فراموشی ما می‌گردد.
February 10, 2017
‘Tlön is surely a labyrinth, but it is a labyrinth devised by men, a labyrinth destined to be deciphered by men.’
Labyrinths is a collection of short stories, essays, and other literary works. It is my first experience with Borges, but it shall not be the last.
Borges writes but he does more than that. He’s a chimaera, part philosopher, part academic, part historian, and part bibliognost. His vast accumulated knowledge penetrates his work to create meta fiction that feels truly authentic, thus one has constantly remind oneself that Borges pens works of fiction and not treatises. He bends thought, axioms, and orthodoxy in his readers. He asks that you submit to his mind. As a reward he elicits a delicious reverberation from his work and the beauty and wisdom of his stories that might appear vastly spread in theme and scope create a cohesive chef-d'oeuvre. It spotlights the mind, a labyrinth, of those before us, those that have been, might have been, those that have etched their names in the annals of history. They create the maze of thought that Borges, like Ariadne leading Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, leads us through.
After a taste of a small portion of his body of work, I have realized something vastly significant that I have missed. Fiction relies as much on the accumulation of knowledge as it is an art form, that words are not only chosen and arranged, that you don’t merely tell a story. But you create a world out of all the information you’ve learned, all the systems you’ve mastered, and all the theories you’ve dissected, all the things you’ve read. Maybe a writer is not like a divine creator who creates something out of nothing, but rather a modest chef who crafts something from the ingredients he has available to him. These ingredients we get from our experiences, our studies, our reading. Not only of fiction, but of philosophy, of different disciplines, of the ancients and of the myths. People say that the best chefs are the gastronomists. Might I presume to say the same thing for writers, that the best writers are those most widely read. And Jorge Luis Borges is as well read a writer as any other. He references both trendy works and works which no one reads anymore. He creates haunting phantasms full of familiarity and novelty, unmatched works unique in sentiment. He echoes the Cabbalists, the Greeks, the European philosophers, even Twain, yet his voice is unassumingly original. In the works of others he finds his reflection staring back at him. His pen is both an enigma and a revelation.
‘Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.’
I have walked the winding path inside the mind of Borges, and the walls of his words enchant me. If to be lost in his labyrinth is to be engulfed in silent brilliance, then I pray never to find my way again.
Labyrinths is a collection of short stories, essays, and other literary works. It is my first experience with Borges, but it shall not be the last.
Borges writes but he does more than that. He’s a chimaera, part philosopher, part academic, part historian, and part bibliognost. His vast accumulated knowledge penetrates his work to create meta fiction that feels truly authentic, thus one has constantly remind oneself that Borges pens works of fiction and not treatises. He bends thought, axioms, and orthodoxy in his readers. He asks that you submit to his mind. As a reward he elicits a delicious reverberation from his work and the beauty and wisdom of his stories that might appear vastly spread in theme and scope create a cohesive chef-d'oeuvre. It spotlights the mind, a labyrinth, of those before us, those that have been, might have been, those that have etched their names in the annals of history. They create the maze of thought that Borges, like Ariadne leading Theseus out of the Minotaur’s labyrinth, leads us through.
After a taste of a small portion of his body of work, I have realized something vastly significant that I have missed. Fiction relies as much on the accumulation of knowledge as it is an art form, that words are not only chosen and arranged, that you don’t merely tell a story. But you create a world out of all the information you’ve learned, all the systems you’ve mastered, and all the theories you’ve dissected, all the things you’ve read. Maybe a writer is not like a divine creator who creates something out of nothing, but rather a modest chef who crafts something from the ingredients he has available to him. These ingredients we get from our experiences, our studies, our reading. Not only of fiction, but of philosophy, of different disciplines, of the ancients and of the myths. People say that the best chefs are the gastronomists. Might I presume to say the same thing for writers, that the best writers are those most widely read. And Jorge Luis Borges is as well read a writer as any other. He references both trendy works and works which no one reads anymore. He creates haunting phantasms full of familiarity and novelty, unmatched works unique in sentiment. He echoes the Cabbalists, the Greeks, the European philosophers, even Twain, yet his voice is unassumingly original. In the works of others he finds his reflection staring back at him. His pen is both an enigma and a revelation.
‘Thus my life is a flight and I lose everything and everything belongs to oblivion, or to him. I do not know which of us has written this page.’
I have walked the winding path inside the mind of Borges, and the walls of his words enchant me. If to be lost in his labyrinth is to be engulfed in silent brilliance, then I pray never to find my way again.
December 17, 2015
Reading. No, thought. No, reality. Or, fiction? Fiction. But also time, and faith, and metonymy.
How close is the instantaneous you to the you in context with time, space, and the integration over the infinite?
What? What.
The what is the period of time wherein I grew fed up with the knowing and began to contemplate the thinking, unknown and yet rather persistent seeing as it continues to niggle at me. Knowing helps, of course, in the foundations of common thought from which propagates communication, an inherently faulty condition in an endless number of ways which we will not delve into now but would have you keep it in mind. The hypothesis, thesis, maxim and crux of touching upon the streaming moment, the schizophrenic past, the hallucinatory future, and everything in between.
You read a story, and you enjoy it. You read a story, and you hate it. You read a story, and think, well, it wasn't a complete waste of time. Now, that last part, that was interesting. For you've just delineated a breaking up of time as corresponding to certain parts of a piece of work, and a differential behavior over time just begs for a formula for explicatory purposes. Wouldn't you say?
Or not. You're not here for math, or maths, or numbers and their rote maneuverings. You're here for ethos, pathos, and logos, on a determined length of instants inside a mind completely reliant on rather inexplicit senses, sailing upon a calibrated fortification of personal/historical/sociocultural context spreading its tendrils into a reality that, for whatever reason, exists. You enter this minute form of visual and linguistic maneuvers with the hope (There are some unfortunates who enter with assurance and/or expectations. Poor souls.) that your time will not be 'wasted'. The variable enters the formula and comes out a solution.
Context? Context. Jorge Luis Borges, for a fortuitous and perhaps godly (Till another word comes along that is as ripe with contextual glory and more suitable for my atheist tendencies, this will have to suffice.) reason, favored a honing of literature over development of mathematica. For an even better reason, he danced along the boundary between the two, and was not troubled in the slightest when the tenuous strands dividing the two sagged and snapped beneath his fearless weight, as there were always other webs upon which to stand and stretch and view from line to point, from word to number, from thought to full bloom with the aid of paper and pen. Always another labyrinth to enter and decorate with riotous abandon and the benefit of his own supreme erudition, with the foresight of penning down the experience so as to not have a single tale of Theseus and the Minotaur, but many. Countless. You tread the labyrinth, as do I, and the measure of our game is how badly each of us wants to get out, and what assumptions we make concerning the proper way of escaping.
How close is the instantaneous you to the you in context with time, space, and the integration over the infinite?
What? What.
The what is the period of time wherein I grew fed up with the knowing and began to contemplate the thinking, unknown and yet rather persistent seeing as it continues to niggle at me. Knowing helps, of course, in the foundations of common thought from which propagates communication, an inherently faulty condition in an endless number of ways which we will not delve into now but would have you keep it in mind. The hypothesis, thesis, maxim and crux of touching upon the streaming moment, the schizophrenic past, the hallucinatory future, and everything in between.
You read a story, and you enjoy it. You read a story, and you hate it. You read a story, and think, well, it wasn't a complete waste of time. Now, that last part, that was interesting. For you've just delineated a breaking up of time as corresponding to certain parts of a piece of work, and a differential behavior over time just begs for a formula for explicatory purposes. Wouldn't you say?
Or not. You're not here for math, or maths, or numbers and their rote maneuverings. You're here for ethos, pathos, and logos, on a determined length of instants inside a mind completely reliant on rather inexplicit senses, sailing upon a calibrated fortification of personal/historical/sociocultural context spreading its tendrils into a reality that, for whatever reason, exists. You enter this minute form of visual and linguistic maneuvers with the hope (There are some unfortunates who enter with assurance and/or expectations. Poor souls.) that your time will not be 'wasted'. The variable enters the formula and comes out a solution.
Context? Context. Jorge Luis Borges, for a fortuitous and perhaps godly (Till another word comes along that is as ripe with contextual glory and more suitable for my atheist tendencies, this will have to suffice.) reason, favored a honing of literature over development of mathematica. For an even better reason, he danced along the boundary between the two, and was not troubled in the slightest when the tenuous strands dividing the two sagged and snapped beneath his fearless weight, as there were always other webs upon which to stand and stretch and view from line to point, from word to number, from thought to full bloom with the aid of paper and pen. Always another labyrinth to enter and decorate with riotous abandon and the benefit of his own supreme erudition, with the foresight of penning down the experience so as to not have a single tale of Theseus and the Minotaur, but many. Countless. You tread the labyrinth, as do I, and the measure of our game is how badly each of us wants to get out, and what assumptions we make concerning the proper way of escaping.
It may be that universal history is the history of the different intonations given a handful of metaphors.Here is the mystery/conspiracy/faith of the world and its sidelong lapses of recognition between fellow souls of humanity, saved now and again by the flow of common themes whose limited number is not a matter to fear, but to enjoy. Here is immortality in the flight of thought and the falling of form, for what is the assurance of death if not an instigation of the limited soul towards a mark in the infinite? Here is a question of theology going hand in hand with the philosophy, and how the two often differ only in the matter of a single variable, accorded by either side with the relative values of everything and nothing. Here is the West, and the East, and Man, and all those time-stamped frames of thought riddling Borges' brain, who as such stands accused but can be excused only by the fact that at least he had the gumption to realize that there were other worlds and frames of (Postmodernism, the particle of you as a function of the wave of you as an answer and a question for, what? Reality, perhaps.) thought that he would never live to see. Or, he would never live to see, in that moment of personal reflection. Just as I will never live to see the reception of this review. Future I will, obviously. But not I.
Words, displaced and mutilated words, words of others, were the poor pittance left him by the hours and the centuries.Tell me, Borges, why do I read?
And why wander in these labyrinths? Once more, for aesthetic reasons; because this present infinity, these "vertiginous symmetries," have their tragic beauty. The form is more important than the content.Tell me, Borges, why do I write?
-André Maurois, 'Preface'
There is no pleasure more complex than that of thought and we surrendered ourselves to it.There we go.
December 12, 2016
Doctor Who visits Argentina
The TARDIS appears in a wheat Farm. Doctor Who and his hot assistant come out of it. "But what are doing in Argentina?"
Doctor replies"I lost my Sonic screwdriver was lost in labyrinths of time." and becomes quit as if the explanation is enough.
Impatient she tries again, "So, how do you know it is to be found in Argentina of 70s?"
"I don't where my screwdriver is. I can't find a thing in labyrinths of time, it is labyrinths of time for goodness sake. Only one person is genius enough to be able to find his way through them."
"Who?"
"What do you mean by 'Who'? I said labrynths!"
The TARDIS appears in a wheat Farm. Doctor Who and his hot assistant come out of it. "But what are doing in Argentina?"
Doctor replies"I lost my Sonic screwdriver was lost in labyrinths of time." and becomes quit as if the explanation is enough.
Impatient she tries again, "So, how do you know it is to be found in Argentina of 70s?"
"I don't where my screwdriver is. I can't find a thing in labyrinths of time, it is labyrinths of time for goodness sake. Only one person is genius enough to be able to find his way through them."
"Who?"
"What do you mean by 'Who'? I said labrynths!"
November 21, 2016
دوستانِ گرانقدر، این کتاب 296 صفحه دارد و مجموعه ای از نوشته ها، روایتها، مصاحبه ها و اشعارِ «بورخس» است... بیشتر به تقدیر و ستایش از قهرمان هایِ جنگی و انقلابی در آرژانتین و زندگیِ و افکارِ آنها پرداخته است
در ابتدایِ کتاب، مترجم «بورخس» را با «حافظ» مقایسه کرده است، که از دیدگاهِ من، اصلاً قابلِ مقایسه نیستند... در زیر تعدادی از نوشته هایِ این کتاب را برایِ شما بزرگواران به انتخاب، مینویسم
---------------------------------------------------
هزارتویِ پُرپیچ و خمی از گام ها
که از روزهایِ من بافته شده است
از روزِ تولدم تا کنون، مرا به این ساعتِ تباهی بسته است
---------------------------------------------------
پسربچه ای بودم که چیزی از مرگ نمیدانست، مرگ ناپذیر بودم
و بعدها روزهایِ روز، اتاق هایِ بی آفتاب را به دنبالِ او کاویدم
---------------------------------------------------
شاید در مرگ، آن هنگام که خاک
خاک است، ما برایِ همیشه
این ریشۀ مرموز باشیم
که بهشت یا دوزخِ بدن هایمان
آرام یا وحشت بار
جاودانه از آن خواهد رویید
--------------------------------------------------
در بینِ نوارهایِ شگفتِ خیزران
راه راه هایِ بدنِ ببر را مینگرم و کالبدِ استخوانی را
در زیرِ پوششِ پرشکوهِ پوستِ لرزان حس میکنم
اقیانوس هایِ پرموج و زباله هایِ سیاره ها
بیهوده ما را از یکدیگر جدا نگاه میدارند
از اینجا در خانه ای دور دست، «آمریکایِ جنوبی» من تو را در رویا میبینم
تو را دنبال میکنم، ای ببرِ کرانه هایِ گنگ
اکنون که شامگاه، روحم را پُر میکند، در می یابم
که ب��رِ شعرِ من
جانوری است در سایه ها، ببری از سَمبُل هاست
و تکه پاره هایی که به تعفن از کتاب ها جمع آمده
رشته ای از استعاره هایِ ماهرانه، که عاری از زندگی اند
و نه ببرِ مقدر، جواهرِ مهلک
که زیرِ خورشید یا ستارگان یا ماهِ افسونگر
در بنگال یا سوماترا می خرامد
و مأموریتِ روزانه اش را از عشق، کاهلی و مرگ به انجام میرساند
--------------------------------------------------
هوشنگِ گلشیری در پایانِ این کتاب نوشته: راستی نکند که «بورخس»، محصولِ رویایِ پدرِ کور خود باشد؟ و شاید هم بشود به شیوۀ «بورخس» گفت: آنکه در موردِ «بورخس» مینویسد، بیشتر در موردِ خودش، آثارِ خودش مینویسد... به راستی که سکۀ «بورخس» چنان فتنه میکند که گاه میترسم نکند کور شویم!، یا من میترسم
--------------------------------------------------
امیدوارم پسندیده باشید
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
در ابتدایِ کتاب، مترجم «بورخس» را با «حافظ» مقایسه کرده است، که از دیدگاهِ من، اصلاً قابلِ مقایسه نیستند... در زیر تعدادی از نوشته هایِ این کتاب را برایِ شما بزرگواران به انتخاب، مینویسم
---------------------------------------------------
هزارتویِ پُرپیچ و خمی از گام ها
که از روزهایِ من بافته شده است
از روزِ تولدم تا کنون، مرا به این ساعتِ تباهی بسته است
---------------------------------------------------
پسربچه ای بودم که چیزی از مرگ نمیدانست، مرگ ناپذیر بودم
و بعدها روزهایِ روز، اتاق هایِ بی آفتاب را به دنبالِ او کاویدم
---------------------------------------------------
شاید در مرگ، آن هنگام که خاک
خاک است، ما برایِ همیشه
این ریشۀ مرموز باشیم
که بهشت یا دوزخِ بدن هایمان
آرام یا وحشت بار
جاودانه از آن خواهد رویید
--------------------------------------------------
در بینِ نوارهایِ شگفتِ خیزران
راه راه هایِ بدنِ ببر را مینگرم و کالبدِ استخوانی را
در زیرِ پوششِ پرشکوهِ پوستِ لرزان حس میکنم
اقیانوس هایِ پرموج و زباله هایِ سیاره ها
بیهوده ما را از یکدیگر جدا نگاه میدارند
از اینجا در خانه ای دور دست، «آمریکایِ جنوبی» من تو را در رویا میبینم
تو را دنبال میکنم، ای ببرِ کرانه هایِ گنگ
اکنون که شامگاه، روحم را پُر میکند، در می یابم
که ب��رِ شعرِ من
جانوری است در سایه ها، ببری از سَمبُل هاست
و تکه پاره هایی که به تعفن از کتاب ها جمع آمده
رشته ای از استعاره هایِ ماهرانه، که عاری از زندگی اند
و نه ببرِ مقدر، جواهرِ مهلک
که زیرِ خورشید یا ستارگان یا ماهِ افسونگر
در بنگال یا سوماترا می خرامد
و مأموریتِ روزانه اش را از عشق، کاهلی و مرگ به انجام میرساند
--------------------------------------------------
هوشنگِ گلشیری در پایانِ این کتاب نوشته: راستی نکند که «بورخس»، محصولِ رویایِ پدرِ کور خود باشد؟ و شاید هم بشود به شیوۀ «بورخس» گفت: آنکه در موردِ «بورخس» مینویسد، بیشتر در موردِ خودش، آثارِ خودش مینویسد... به راستی که سکۀ «بورخس» چنان فتنه میکند که گاه میترسم نکند کور شویم!، یا من میترسم
--------------------------------------------------
امیدوارم پسندیده باشید
<پیروز باشید و ایرانی>
September 12, 2019
اول از همه بگم که درباره موضوعات و ماهیت داستانهای بورخس اطلاعات کاملی نداشتم و فقط می‌دونستم که باید بخونمش! چندتا داستان اول این مجموعه رو که خوندم فکر کردم دلیل ممنوع شدنش اینه که همه‌ی داستان‌هاش درباره‌ی لات‌ها و چاقوکشی و آدمکشیه! اما... تنوعی که دنبالش بودم پیدا شد و شیفته‌ی کتاب شدم. داستان‌ها خیلی متفاوتن و به نظرم همین یک امتیاز مثبت چشمگیره.
داستانهای ویرانه‌های مدور، زخم شمشیر، ابن حقان بخاری و مرگ او در هزارتوی خود، مرگ دیگر ، انجیل به روایت مرقس رو بیشتر دوست داشتم 💯😊
داستانهای ویرانه‌های مدور، زخم شمشیر، ابن حقان بخاری و مرگ او در هزارتوی خود، مرگ دیگر ، انجیل به روایت مرقس رو بیشتر دوست داشتم 💯😊
March 8, 2015
Jorge Luis Borges, one of the most imaginative writers I have come across, could have been a mathematician, a physicist, a philosopher or a theologian. I can see his influence on Umberto Eco in the manipulation of text and the blending between fiction and reality. To read Borges’s Labyrinth is immerse myself in a magical world where the concept of infinity manifests in space and time, where the boundary between dream and reality fades, where the past and the future converge into an instant, where levels of texts superimpose on one another, where fiction imitates nonfiction and life is a drama on stage. To read Borges is to become children again, listening to stories of magic and wonder, of unfathomable worlds.
In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges creates a fictional world, where Berkeleyan idealism dominates its inhabitant’s thinking. “The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts.” Through the narrator Borges, we encounter a language without nouns, but with “personal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value.” The author Borges has created an alternative world, where the language and the worldviews differ from our world and from it we learn of our biases and blind spots. And we can begin to imagine new worlds, new possibilities. We can create our own languages, as Tolkien has in his fiction, and as software engineers has BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and so forth. We see similar blending of fact and fiction in Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery.
In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” we encounter an infinitely long book where at every juncture of the story, all possibilities are written and the branches grow exponentially. “In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pen, he chooses—simultaneously—all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork.” When I was younger, I have read stories where the reader can choose one of several actions—the decision tree—and turn to the appropriate page for that choice. The story continues from there until there is another choice. And the story would have several endings. After reading this story, I realize where the idea came from. Perhaps, Borges read about the many world interpretation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that before an observation, a system could be in various states—position, momentum, time, energy—according to a probability distribution and only when someone has observed the system—photons bouncing off the object—would it collapsed into a single state. In science fiction, such as Star Trek, we read about parallel universes but this may be the first story with such a concept.
In “The Library of Babel,” Borges again plays around with the concept of infinity, but this time also with combinatorial and I can imagine Borges as a mathematician or computer scientist. A labyrinth of infinite number of rooms stores books that include all combinations of a 22-letter alphabet plus spaces and the comma and period. Since we know the number of characters in each book, we can calculate the number of possible books (not infinite). Of course, most of them are meaningless. Is this universe of repeated rooms each with five shelves and thirty-five books a mirror of our world? Interestingly, in Eco’s The Name of the Rose, the blind monk who oversees the library is named Jorge of Burgos.
I have heard of the argument that Judas betrayed Jesus to force the latter to reveal his divinity and complete God’s work, but in “Three Versions of Judas,” the controversial theologian reinterprets the Biblical text and declares Judas the savior and God’s incarnation. “To save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.” Borges’s fascination with text, whether historical documents or his own creation, dominates much of his stories and Eco certainly inherits that fascination.
In “The Circular Ruins” where a man is only another’s dream figment and “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” where a man’s execution for betrayal is part of a drama, Borges again mixes fact with fiction to create worlds as ephemeral as mist.
I recommend Labyrinth to anyone who wants to dream of magical worlds, who wants to reflect on reality and fiction, who wants to analyze the boundary between text and the interpreter, and who wants to contemplate on the nature of infinity.
In “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges creates a fictional world, where Berkeleyan idealism dominates its inhabitant’s thinking. “The world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts.” Through the narrator Borges, we encounter a language without nouns, but with “personal verbs, modified by monosyllabic suffixes (or prefixes) with an adverbial value.” The author Borges has created an alternative world, where the language and the worldviews differ from our world and from it we learn of our biases and blind spots. And we can begin to imagine new worlds, new possibilities. We can create our own languages, as Tolkien has in his fiction, and as software engineers has BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and so forth. We see similar blending of fact and fiction in Umberto Eco’s The Prague Cemetery.
In “The Garden of Forking Paths,” we encounter an infinitely long book where at every juncture of the story, all possibilities are written and the branches grow exponentially. “In all fictional works, each time a man is confronted with several alternatives, he chooses one and eliminates the others; in the fiction of Ts’ui Pen, he chooses—simultaneously—all of them. He creates, in this way, diverse futures, diverse times which themselves also proliferate and fork.” When I was younger, I have read stories where the reader can choose one of several actions—the decision tree—and turn to the appropriate page for that choice. The story continues from there until there is another choice. And the story would have several endings. After reading this story, I realize where the idea came from. Perhaps, Borges read about the many world interpretation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which states that before an observation, a system could be in various states—position, momentum, time, energy—according to a probability distribution and only when someone has observed the system—photons bouncing off the object—would it collapsed into a single state. In science fiction, such as Star Trek, we read about parallel universes but this may be the first story with such a concept.
In “The Library of Babel,” Borges again plays around with the concept of infinity, but this time also with combinatorial and I can imagine Borges as a mathematician or computer scientist. A labyrinth of infinite number of rooms stores books that include all combinations of a 22-letter alphabet plus spaces and the comma and period. Since we know the number of characters in each book, we can calculate the number of possible books (not infinite). Of course, most of them are meaningless. Is this universe of repeated rooms each with five shelves and thirty-five books a mirror of our world? Interestingly, in Eco’s The Name of the Rose, the blind monk who oversees the library is named Jorge of Burgos.
I have heard of the argument that Judas betrayed Jesus to force the latter to reveal his divinity and complete God’s work, but in “Three Versions of Judas,” the controversial theologian reinterprets the Biblical text and declares Judas the savior and God’s incarnation. “To save us, He could have chosen any of the destinies which make up the complex web of history; He could have been Alexander or Pythagoras or Rurik or Jesus; He chose the vilest destiny of all: He was Judas.” Borges’s fascination with text, whether historical documents or his own creation, dominates much of his stories and Eco certainly inherits that fascination.
In “The Circular Ruins” where a man is only another’s dream figment and “The Theme of the Traitor and the Hero” where a man’s execution for betrayal is part of a drama, Borges again mixes fact with fiction to create worlds as ephemeral as mist.
I recommend Labyrinth to anyone who wants to dream of magical worlds, who wants to reflect on reality and fiction, who wants to analyze the boundary between text and the interpreter, and who wants to contemplate on the nature of infinity.
August 16, 2017
”This City is so horrible that its mere existence and perdurance, though in the midst of a secret desert, contaminates the past and the future and in some way even jeopardizes the stars. As long as it lasts, no one in the world can be strong or happy. I do not want to describe it; a chaos of heterogeneous words, the body of a tiger or a bull in which teeth, organs and heads monstrously pullulate in mutual conjunction and hatred can (perhaps) be approximate images.”
In Labyrinths, Borges meanders through some impressively intricate conceptual realms. His exquisitely crafted tales are richly layered with curious ideas from philosophy and mathematics, and that is a large part of why they are so entrancing. He playfully and skillfully arranges and rearranges thematic elements such as time, infinity, paradoxes, identity, mirrors, reality, Solipsism, dreams, the annihilation of opposites, and the infinite contained in the infinitesimal. Within these pages you’ll get lost in endless houses that repeat themselves endlessly, and discover “strange geometries” that’d surely have impressed the shit out of Lovecraft. The threads of these recurring themes are masterfully tangled, entwined, and interwoven throughout the various stories; beautiful patterns and textures emerge.
Given Borges’ penchant for paradoxes and impossible geometries, it is hard not to be reminded of M. C. Escher. Below are a few of his pictures which suitably convey some of the surreal atmosphere you’ll find in the book:
If you’re uncertain as to whether or not you should pick this up, I’d recommend trying The House of Asterion. At only 3 pages long, it manages to pack an incredible punch, and is fairly representative of Borges’ style. It is probably my favorite story. Others worth mentioning include The Garden of Forking Paths, Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote, The Immortal, The Zahir, and Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius.
Overall, this collection is full of truly captivating metaphysical mindfucks. Borges’ imaginings are eerie and dark, breathtakingly bizarre. You often experience the sensation that you’re eternally falling and yet entirely motionless at the same time. If any of this sounds agreeable to you, do yourself a favor and enter into Borges’ infinite, labyrinthine playground. It's fun to get lost sometimes.
“…your ancestor did not believe in a uniform, absolute time. He believed in an infinite series of times, in a growing, dizzying net of divergent, convergent and parallel times. This network of times which approached one another, forked, broke off, or were unaware of one another for centuries, embraces all possibilities of time.”
October 29, 2021
111th book of 2021.
Borges has the great gift and frustration of being wonderfully readable and hard to understand at the same time: a sort of bonus paradox/labyrinth/conundrum. It’s been a short time since I first read Ficciones so I read them again as they are here within Labyrinths and found myself enjoying them more and finding them “deeper” (by which I mean more profound). “The Secret Miracle”, for example, is a beautiful, beautiful, story: it is hopeful and saddening, cathartic. Part of a sentence runs, ‘Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it’, and how true is that? For things are always less scary, more terrifying, more hurtful, less dangerous, than we anticipate. The usual suspects still hold up too— “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “The Library of Babel”, etc. Labyrinths also contains some essays which move through Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare. It’s reading Borges’ essays that we realise that they are not too dissimilar from his stories and that they can be equally frightening and labyrinthine (and I discovered on this reading, Dickian?) than his fiction. The end of the essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote” reads,
Perhaps the greatest essay ending I’ve read. And his essay on Kafka (“Kafka and his Precursors”) captures the history of literature too with the line, ‘The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.’ Kafka is blessed to have this essay and David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed”. I may add more to this as I work my way back out of Borges’ labyrinths.
Borges has the great gift and frustration of being wonderfully readable and hard to understand at the same time: a sort of bonus paradox/labyrinth/conundrum. It’s been a short time since I first read Ficciones so I read them again as they are here within Labyrinths and found myself enjoying them more and finding them “deeper” (by which I mean more profound). “The Secret Miracle”, for example, is a beautiful, beautiful, story: it is hopeful and saddening, cathartic. Part of a sentence runs, ‘Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it’, and how true is that? For things are always less scary, more terrifying, more hurtful, less dangerous, than we anticipate. The usual suspects still hold up too— “The Garden of Forking Paths”, “The Library of Babel”, etc. Labyrinths also contains some essays which move through Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare. It’s reading Borges’ essays that we realise that they are not too dissimilar from his stories and that they can be equally frightening and labyrinthine (and I discovered on this reading, Dickian?) than his fiction. The end of the essay “Partial Magic in the Quixote” reads,
Why does it disturb us that the map be included in the map of the thousand and one nights in the book of the ‘Thousand and One Nights’? Why does it disturb us that Don Quixote can be a reader of the ‘Quixote’ and Hamlet a spectator of ‘Hamlet’? I believe I have found the reason : these inversions suggest that if the characters of a fictional work can be readers of spectators, we, its readers or spectators, can be fictitious. In 1833, Carlyle observed that the history of the universe is an infinite sacred book that all men write and read and try to understand, and in which they are also written.
Perhaps the greatest essay ending I’ve read. And his essay on Kafka (“Kafka and his Precursors”) captures the history of literature too with the line, ‘The fact is that every writer creates his own precursors. His work modifies our conception of the past, as it will modify the future.’ Kafka is blessed to have this essay and David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Some Remarks on Kafka’s Funniness from Which Probably Not Enough Has Been Removed”. I may add more to this as I work my way back out of Borges’ labyrinths.
March 19, 2024
For a few years in my early 20s I was obsessed with this book. Some of these stories I have read probably 10 times. The opening story ('Tlon, Uqbar, Orbius Tertius') is one of the most challenging, rewarding mind-f**ks in all literature. Borges's style is limited — this becomes clearer in his later work — but for me this collection is superbly chosen. Rarely has so much innovation been crammed into so short a space, but innovation of the controlled kind. No displays of histrionics for this Argentine; his stories are well-wrought and concise. Every story or essay seems to focus on a paradox and explode it.
Is it only me or does anyone else see a bit of Borges in Philip K. Dick? And why are the Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation) called the Borg? I mean, the librarian in The Name of the Rose was called Jorge for a reason. What I'm saying is these days Borges's influence seems to be everywhere. Or is it just that he condensed so many of the key themes in literature down to such a fundamental state that now it seems as if he owns them?
A pre-post-modernist without whom I doubt Eco or Italo Calvino could have turned out as they did, Borges is everything that's good about those two younger Italians condensed down into something you can swallow. In the mind-bending short story stakes only Edgar Allan Poe comes close. Life-changing.
Is it only me or does anyone else see a bit of Borges in Philip K. Dick? And why are the Borg (Star Trek: The Next Generation) called the Borg? I mean, the librarian in The Name of the Rose was called Jorge for a reason. What I'm saying is these days Borges's influence seems to be everywhere. Or is it just that he condensed so many of the key themes in literature down to such a fundamental state that now it seems as if he owns them?
A pre-post-modernist without whom I doubt Eco or Italo Calvino could have turned out as they did, Borges is everything that's good about those two younger Italians condensed down into something you can swallow. In the mind-bending short story stakes only Edgar Allan Poe comes close. Life-changing.
January 20, 2021
آنکه بتواند گلی را درک کند قادر است همه جهان را درک کند.
"عالی بود"
"عالی بود"
July 19, 2023
"It is doubtful that the world has a meaning; It is even more doubtful that it has a double or triple meaning, the unbeliever will observe."
Jorge Luis Borges has composed only small essays and short fictional works.
Somebody told me that he is very intelligent and writes in a mathematical style. What? Maths in Fiction! No not maths. Only mathematical style! He was an Argentine by birth and through this book, I was reading him for the first time in detail. His Emma Zunz was the only story I had read so far. I was not let down. Not only mathematical, I found his fiction universal and too much symbolic also. Those features are very clear and visible. This book contains some twenty-three short works of fiction and almost ten essays. Essays are also short and precise. There are some short parables in the end.
I began with the Essays first and read the essay titled "The wall and the books" , where he presented his thoughts on the Chinese emperor who erected the Wall of China and ordered to burn all the books that were published before him, to erase the history. He wanted history to start from his reign. Borges has expressed his thoughts on such an emperor and his tendency of burning history. There are some other interesting essays too, "Kafka and his precursors" and " The Mirror of enigmas". I found them enlightening.
In the short stories, there is such precision that I can only call it masterly!
"Why to take five hundred pages," he asks " to develop an idea whose oral demonstration fits into a few minutes." This statement confirms his attitude and approach. There are mysteries and detective tales. His metaphysical fiction took me time to get hold of. Borges once claimed that the basic devices of all the fantastic literature are only four in number: the work within the work, the contamination of reality by the dream, the voyage in time, and the double!
Aren't these parameters interesting?
Out of the stories, the first story that I read was " the Garden of the forking path". I will call it an interesting philosophical rumination, It's a riddle and parable and its theme is time. Labyrinth of time!"The Lottery in Babylon " was another one that I read, here in an ancient town people play the lottery- lottery. They pay in copper coins and hope to win silver coins in return and it is beautifully written. The narrator comes from a dizzy land where the lottery is the basis of reality. "I have known what the Greeks do not know. Certitude." The Babylonians threw themselves into the game and those who did not acquire chances were considered pusillanimous, and cowardly. Lottery becomes life there, Somebody wrote that this story was an allegory of totalitarianism. Maybe it was but for me, it was a story of chance and the author played amazingly well with the vehemence of human nature and emotions.
There are other stories and essays that I liked in this book, I am going to revisit Borges again for sure, While reading these stories, especially the above two that I mentioned, the one contemporary author who instantly appeared in my imagination was Orhan Pamuk, because similar traits and philosophical ruminations with the mathematical precision, I had experienced in his books too. There is one thing that I would like to say in the end though I liked his work in this book for its symbolism, many people may dislike it for the same reason, because If you don't like such prose, You may find it dull and dreary.
For me, the book was a winner.
January 19, 2022
"A Problem"....
What would happen, wonders Borges, if due to his belief in these fantasies, Don Quixote attacks and kills a real person? Borges asks a fundamental question about the human condition: what happens when the yarns spun by our narrating self cause grievous harm to ourselves or those around us? There are three main possibilities, says Borges.
One option is that nothing much happens. Don Quixote will not be bothered at all by killing a real man. His delusions are so overpowering that he will not be able to recognise the difference between committing actual murder and dueling with the imaginary windmill giants.
Another option is that once he takes a person’s life, Don Quixote will be so horrified that he will be shaken out of his delusions. This is akin to a young recruit who goes to war believing that it is good to die for one’s country, only to end up completely disillusioned by the realities of warfare.
But there is a third option, much more complex and profound. As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.
What would happen, wonders Borges, if due to his belief in these fantasies, Don Quixote attacks and kills a real person? Borges asks a fundamental question about the human condition: what happens when the yarns spun by our narrating self cause grievous harm to ourselves or those around us? There are three main possibilities, says Borges.
One option is that nothing much happens. Don Quixote will not be bothered at all by killing a real man. His delusions are so overpowering that he will not be able to recognise the difference between committing actual murder and dueling with the imaginary windmill giants.
Another option is that once he takes a person’s life, Don Quixote will be so horrified that he will be shaken out of his delusions. This is akin to a young recruit who goes to war believing that it is good to die for one’s country, only to end up completely disillusioned by the realities of warfare.
But there is a third option, much more complex and profound. As long as he fought imaginary giants, Don Quixote was just play-acting. However once he actually kills someone, he will cling to his fantasies for all he is worth, because only they give meaning to his tragic misdeed. Paradoxically, the more sacrifices we make for an imaginary story, the more tenaciously we hold on to it, because we desperately want to give meaning to these sacrifices and to the suffering we have caused.
January 17, 2021
امید و ترس را شناختم.
صورت‌های توامان آینده‌ی نامعلوم را .
بیخوابی را شناختم.خواب را، رؤیاها را،
جهل را،جسم را،
هزارتوهای مدور عقل را،
دوستی انسان‌ها را،
عبودیت کورسگان را.
مرا دوست داشتند ،شناختند،ستودند،
و از صلیب آویختند.
صورت‌های توامان آینده‌ی نامعلوم را .
بیخوابی را شناختم.خواب را، رؤیاها را،
جهل را،جسم را،
هزارتوهای مدور عقل را،
دوستی انسان‌ها را،
عبودیت کورسگان را.
مرا دوست داشتند ،شناختند،ستودند،
و از صلیب آویختند.
December 25, 2018
LABIRIN BERNAMA BORGES
"Thinkin’ is a lonely business."―Martin Heidegger
BORGES, seumur hidupnya, memiliki nasib baik untuk selalu berdekatan dengan buku dan literatur. Semenjak kecil ia sering menghabiskan waktu di perpustakaan ayahnya. Di sana lah, di antara ribuan buku berbahasa Inggris, fragmen paling penting buat Borges kecil—yang kelak mempengaruhi jalan hidupnya. Siapa sangka, di masa tuanya Borges diangkat menjadi direktur perpustakaan nasional.
Barangkali bertolak dari pengalaman itu ia membuat cerita pendek di mana tokohnya gemar menelusuri literatur, sejarah, dan kultur dari dunia luas. Dalam buku Labyrinths, Borges mengarang plot yang membuat tokohnya menyusuri halaman-halaman ensiklopedia untuk mengetahui apa itu Uqbar dan Tlön (dalam Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius) dan, tanpa keraguan akan jadi membosankan, menampilkan 19 nomor literatur karya Menard pada satu cerita pendek (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote).
Juga pada beberapa cerpen yang lain, Borges tampak sebagai pembaca tekun yang mencoba memahami labirin-labirin literatur perpustakaan. Gejala yang sering kita temui: Borges melakukan banyak penyebutan referensi. Gema dari ruang pikirannya seakan tak mau berhenti.
Saya ingat satu kalimat dari Orhan Pamuk yang mungkin relevan untuk melihat Borges: "The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books."
●●●
André Maurois menyakini sumber-sumber bacaan Borges "tak terhitung dan tak terduga". Borges membaca apa yang orang jarang tertarik, seperti Kabalis atau filosofi zaman pertengahan (saya pernah mendengar orang berkata, hanya Umberto Eco yang mungkin menyamai antusiasme tersebut). Ia mengagumi keganjilan hubungan antara tidur dan mimpi, dan untuk itu mengutip cerita Qur'an 1400 tahun yang lalu tentang pemuda Kahfi (The Secret Miracle).
Dari sumber-sumber nyata itu Borges mencampurkannya dalam detail dan sitasi yang membuat kita kadang berpikir fiksi Borges adalah potongan realitas. Tapi dunia cerita Borges tetaplah cuma imajiner. Dan dalam labirin imajiner itulah (bukan dunia yang penuh langkah-langkah kaki dan percakapan ramai), kita diajaknya ikut serta. Kita seperti tokoh dalam The Circular Ruins: seorang lelaki yang berusaha menciptakan manusia dalam mimpi, dan akhirnya menyadari, setelah tidak terbakar oleh api, bahwa ia sendiri ciptaan imajiner dari orang lain yang bermimpi―apa yang kelihatan nyata rupanya hanya bagian dari ilusi.
Borges meringkus labirin-labirin imajiner itu dalam bentuk cerita pendek yang seperti esai: hampir seluruhnya narasi dan sarat misteri. Satu lagi: tidak banyak dialog antartokoh di dalamnya. Dengan itu Borges menciptakan dunia rekaan yang menurutnya masuk akal dan berusaha menawarkan makna, misalnya tentang eksistensi manusia, dalam bentuk yang mungkin tidak bisa diungkapkan melalui jalan lain.
Dalam salah satu interviu dengan Denis Dutton, Borges mengaku menggunakan filosofi untuk cerita pendek sebagaimana Dante menggunakan teologi untuk puisi. Borges menyebut karangan-karangan itu "fiksi filosofi" ketimbang "fiksi sains". Bagi Borges, memasuki lorong-lorong ide, melontarkan kontradiksi, dan menguraikan drama kemungkinan-ketakmungkinan dalam cerita pendek adalah caranya untuk skeptis. Maka kita sering menemukan paradoks, serangkai ketakjelasan, ketika mencoba memahami cerita-ceritanya: tiap kali kita harus menerkanya seperti teka-teki dan membacanya berulang kali.
●●●
Salah satu ketegangan intelektual yang sempat menjadi perhatian Borges adalah, meski ia lahir di Buenos Aires, kita tak melihat yang khas Argentina dalam cerita-ceritanya. Di The Garden of Forking Paths ia membuat karakter Yu Tsun dan Ts'ui Pên―nama Tiongkok, sekaligus dengan mudahnya mengutip Seribu Satu Malam, Newton, dan Schopenhauer. Di Funes the Memorious ia membicarakan seorang Uruguay, menyamakannya dengan Zarathustra, dan menyebut baberapa kota dan negara dalam satu cerita: Monteviedo, San Franscisco, London, New York, Mesir. Di The Lottery in Babylon ia narator yang mengaku sebagai orang Babilonia―sebuah negeri dari dunia yang lama. Di The Shape of the Sword ia menulis mengenai orang Irlandia yang terlibat perang sipil dan melarikan diri ke Brazil. Saya mengira semua itu ada hubungannya dengan hidupnya yang sejak kecil berpindah-pindah dan terbiasa dikelilingi bahasa-bahasa yang mewakili peradaban besar dunia.
Tentu ada yang lebih mendasar dari itu. Dalam esai The Argentine Writer and Tradition, Borges mengajukan proposal bahwa penulis-penulis Argentina, termasuk dirinya, kurang-lebih mengacu pada tradisi kultur Barat. Maka jika kita tak menemukan topografi atau botani Argentina dalam sebuah karangan, bagi Borges, hal itu tak seharusnya mengurangi nilai karangan tersebut. Pada cerita Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, misalnya, Borges lebih memilih berbicara tentang kemungkinan sebuah plot di mana seorang Irlandia bernama Ryan ingin mencari tahu kebenaran mengenai Fergus Killpatrick, satu tokoh yang dianggap hero. Di sana kita menemukan latar Irlandia dan kutipan nama-nama terkenal dalam tradisi Barat: Chesterton, Leibniz, Hugo, Hegel, Shakespeare.
Meski punya dasar yang universal, saya menduga (bukan bermaksud memutuskan) fiksi filosofi Borges mudah untuk tak populer. Gaya bercerita Borges yang intelektual masih terlalu luks untuk, misalnya, kelas menengah ke bawah. Hanya orang-orang yang mencintai ilmu dan sastra yang saya kira akan konsisten membaca karangan Borges.
Sebab cerita-ceritanya memang punya kecenderungan labirin yang ruwet: di tengah-tengahnya kita mungkin tersesat, dan tidak tahu bagaimana caranya untuk selamat. Sementara Borges tak ingin menjadi pengarang yang memberi terang. Ia telah menyatakan undur diri dari cerita―dalam satu interviu ia mengatakan: "[W]e have no message at all. When I write, I write because a thing has to be done. I don't think a writer should meddle too much with his own work. He should let the work write itself."
●●●
Tentu saja dugaan saya tak harus dipercaya.
Perspektif yang lebih optimis mengatakan bahwa cerita-ceritanya, seperti dikatakan James E. Irby, semacam sintesa antara penemuan dan pencerahan. Oleh karena itu Borges memukau. Borges, misalnya, memaparkan tafsiran sinologis Stephen Albert dalam usahanya untuk mengerti kalimat "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths" dan mengklaim menemukan maksudnya. Atau bagaimana Borges mendalami pertentangan antara apa yang asli dan imitasi ketika seseorang punya ikhtiar menuliskan kembali kisah Quixote dari Cervantes. Pada kali lain, ia seorang detektif, Erik Lönnrot, yang berusaha menemukan titik cerah atas kasus pembunuhan yang berkaitan dengan kalimat misterius seperti ayat kitab suci.
Saya sedikit banyak setuju dengan Irby: saya seorang pembaca yang mengamati titik-titik terang dari segala kerumitan yang ditemukan Borges, dan dengan rasa penasaran, seperti sang narator dalam Funes the Memorious, saya akan mengatakan: "I don't know how many stars he could see in the sky". Saya ingat Søren Kierkegaard yang mengatakan, kita “seharusnya tidak berpikir buruk tentang paradoks, karena paradoks adalah gairah pikiran. Seorang pemikir tanpa paradoks bak seorang pecinta tanpa gairah: seorang medioker”.
Tapi ketimbang cerita-cerita pendek Borges, saya seorang pembaca yang lebih kena pesona oleh parabel-parabelnya. Mungkin karena parabelnya ringkas dan saya tak ingin terlihat selalu bodoh di hadapan kerumitan cerita Borges―saya diam-diam menandai hal itu sebagai sebuah kelegaan.
"Thinkin’ is a lonely business."―Martin Heidegger
BORGES, seumur hidupnya, memiliki nasib baik untuk selalu berdekatan dengan buku dan literatur. Semenjak kecil ia sering menghabiskan waktu di perpustakaan ayahnya. Di sana lah, di antara ribuan buku berbahasa Inggris, fragmen paling penting buat Borges kecil—yang kelak mempengaruhi jalan hidupnya. Siapa sangka, di masa tuanya Borges diangkat menjadi direktur perpustakaan nasional.
Barangkali bertolak dari pengalaman itu ia membuat cerita pendek di mana tokohnya gemar menelusuri literatur, sejarah, dan kultur dari dunia luas. Dalam buku Labyrinths, Borges mengarang plot yang membuat tokohnya menyusuri halaman-halaman ensiklopedia untuk mengetahui apa itu Uqbar dan Tlön (dalam Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius) dan, tanpa keraguan akan jadi membosankan, menampilkan 19 nomor literatur karya Menard pada satu cerita pendek (Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote).
Juga pada beberapa cerpen yang lain, Borges tampak sebagai pembaca tekun yang mencoba memahami labirin-labirin literatur perpustakaan. Gejala yang sering kita temui: Borges melakukan banyak penyebutan referensi. Gema dari ruang pikirannya seakan tak mau berhenti.
Saya ingat satu kalimat dari Orhan Pamuk yang mungkin relevan untuk melihat Borges: "The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books."
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André Maurois menyakini sumber-sumber bacaan Borges "tak terhitung dan tak terduga". Borges membaca apa yang orang jarang tertarik, seperti Kabalis atau filosofi zaman pertengahan (saya pernah mendengar orang berkata, hanya Umberto Eco yang mungkin menyamai antusiasme tersebut). Ia mengagumi keganjilan hubungan antara tidur dan mimpi, dan untuk itu mengutip cerita Qur'an 1400 tahun yang lalu tentang pemuda Kahfi (The Secret Miracle).
Dari sumber-sumber nyata itu Borges mencampurkannya dalam detail dan sitasi yang membuat kita kadang berpikir fiksi Borges adalah potongan realitas. Tapi dunia cerita Borges tetaplah cuma imajiner. Dan dalam labirin imajiner itulah (bukan dunia yang penuh langkah-langkah kaki dan percakapan ramai), kita diajaknya ikut serta. Kita seperti tokoh dalam The Circular Ruins: seorang lelaki yang berusaha menciptakan manusia dalam mimpi, dan akhirnya menyadari, setelah tidak terbakar oleh api, bahwa ia sendiri ciptaan imajiner dari orang lain yang bermimpi―apa yang kelihatan nyata rupanya hanya bagian dari ilusi.
Borges meringkus labirin-labirin imajiner itu dalam bentuk cerita pendek yang seperti esai: hampir seluruhnya narasi dan sarat misteri. Satu lagi: tidak banyak dialog antartokoh di dalamnya. Dengan itu Borges menciptakan dunia rekaan yang menurutnya masuk akal dan berusaha menawarkan makna, misalnya tentang eksistensi manusia, dalam bentuk yang mungkin tidak bisa diungkapkan melalui jalan lain.
Dalam salah satu interviu dengan Denis Dutton, Borges mengaku menggunakan filosofi untuk cerita pendek sebagaimana Dante menggunakan teologi untuk puisi. Borges menyebut karangan-karangan itu "fiksi filosofi" ketimbang "fiksi sains". Bagi Borges, memasuki lorong-lorong ide, melontarkan kontradiksi, dan menguraikan drama kemungkinan-ketakmungkinan dalam cerita pendek adalah caranya untuk skeptis. Maka kita sering menemukan paradoks, serangkai ketakjelasan, ketika mencoba memahami cerita-ceritanya: tiap kali kita harus menerkanya seperti teka-teki dan membacanya berulang kali.
●●●
Salah satu ketegangan intelektual yang sempat menjadi perhatian Borges adalah, meski ia lahir di Buenos Aires, kita tak melihat yang khas Argentina dalam cerita-ceritanya. Di The Garden of Forking Paths ia membuat karakter Yu Tsun dan Ts'ui Pên―nama Tiongkok, sekaligus dengan mudahnya mengutip Seribu Satu Malam, Newton, dan Schopenhauer. Di Funes the Memorious ia membicarakan seorang Uruguay, menyamakannya dengan Zarathustra, dan menyebut baberapa kota dan negara dalam satu cerita: Monteviedo, San Franscisco, London, New York, Mesir. Di The Lottery in Babylon ia narator yang mengaku sebagai orang Babilonia―sebuah negeri dari dunia yang lama. Di The Shape of the Sword ia menulis mengenai orang Irlandia yang terlibat perang sipil dan melarikan diri ke Brazil. Saya mengira semua itu ada hubungannya dengan hidupnya yang sejak kecil berpindah-pindah dan terbiasa dikelilingi bahasa-bahasa yang mewakili peradaban besar dunia.
Tentu ada yang lebih mendasar dari itu. Dalam esai The Argentine Writer and Tradition, Borges mengajukan proposal bahwa penulis-penulis Argentina, termasuk dirinya, kurang-lebih mengacu pada tradisi kultur Barat. Maka jika kita tak menemukan topografi atau botani Argentina dalam sebuah karangan, bagi Borges, hal itu tak seharusnya mengurangi nilai karangan tersebut. Pada cerita Theme of the Traitor and the Hero, misalnya, Borges lebih memilih berbicara tentang kemungkinan sebuah plot di mana seorang Irlandia bernama Ryan ingin mencari tahu kebenaran mengenai Fergus Killpatrick, satu tokoh yang dianggap hero. Di sana kita menemukan latar Irlandia dan kutipan nama-nama terkenal dalam tradisi Barat: Chesterton, Leibniz, Hugo, Hegel, Shakespeare.
Meski punya dasar yang universal, saya menduga (bukan bermaksud memutuskan) fiksi filosofi Borges mudah untuk tak populer. Gaya bercerita Borges yang intelektual masih terlalu luks untuk, misalnya, kelas menengah ke bawah. Hanya orang-orang yang mencintai ilmu dan sastra yang saya kira akan konsisten membaca karangan Borges.
Sebab cerita-ceritanya memang punya kecenderungan labirin yang ruwet: di tengah-tengahnya kita mungkin tersesat, dan tidak tahu bagaimana caranya untuk selamat. Sementara Borges tak ingin menjadi pengarang yang memberi terang. Ia telah menyatakan undur diri dari cerita―dalam satu interviu ia mengatakan: "[W]e have no message at all. When I write, I write because a thing has to be done. I don't think a writer should meddle too much with his own work. He should let the work write itself."
●●●
Tentu saja dugaan saya tak harus dipercaya.
Perspektif yang lebih optimis mengatakan bahwa cerita-ceritanya, seperti dikatakan James E. Irby, semacam sintesa antara penemuan dan pencerahan. Oleh karena itu Borges memukau. Borges, misalnya, memaparkan tafsiran sinologis Stephen Albert dalam usahanya untuk mengerti kalimat "I leave to the various futures (not to all) my garden of forking paths" dan mengklaim menemukan maksudnya. Atau bagaimana Borges mendalami pertentangan antara apa yang asli dan imitasi ketika seseorang punya ikhtiar menuliskan kembali kisah Quixote dari Cervantes. Pada kali lain, ia seorang detektif, Erik Lönnrot, yang berusaha menemukan titik cerah atas kasus pembunuhan yang berkaitan dengan kalimat misterius seperti ayat kitab suci.
Saya sedikit banyak setuju dengan Irby: saya seorang pembaca yang mengamati titik-titik terang dari segala kerumitan yang ditemukan Borges, dan dengan rasa penasaran, seperti sang narator dalam Funes the Memorious, saya akan mengatakan: "I don't know how many stars he could see in the sky". Saya ingat Søren Kierkegaard yang mengatakan, kita “seharusnya tidak berpikir buruk tentang paradoks, karena paradoks adalah gairah pikiran. Seorang pemikir tanpa paradoks bak seorang pecinta tanpa gairah: seorang medioker”.
Tapi ketimbang cerita-cerita pendek Borges, saya seorang pembaca yang lebih kena pesona oleh parabel-parabelnya. Mungkin karena parabelnya ringkas dan saya tak ingin terlihat selalu bodoh di hadapan kerumitan cerita Borges―saya diam-diam menandai hal itu sebagai sebuah kelegaan.
October 2, 2007
Borges typically gets lumped into the South American "magical realism" genre along with the likes of Gabriel Garcia Marquez (whom I've still yet to read; shame on me). But his style is very peculiar. The book is supposed to be a collection of short stories, or as Borges himself called them, ficciones. But few of them are what one would typically consider stories at all. They tend to be short fictional essays, book reviews, obituaries, articles, etc. (There's also a detective story and a couple of first hand narratives.) Borges reviews books that have never been written, eulogizes people who have never lived, and writes articles refuting scholars that don't exist. And why? The best I could tell was that he wanted to explore what the world would be like if modern philosophy were actually true. He toys with Bishop Berkeley's idea that the physical world need not necessarily exist. So long as the sense perceptions it supposedly creates affect our consciousness it's material existence is superfluous. He also plays with Hume's denial of the existence of personal identity. Need it necessarily be the case that this string of sense perceptions which I call myself has any actual unity? Need it necessarily constitute a "person" at all? What if it is nothing more than a random string of impressions? Also, Borges enjoys meddling with the sequence of time itself. If two events happened in exactly the same way, why could they not simply be the same event? Is it necessary to posit the idea of temporal sequence at all? Could not all moments be entirely unrelated to each other? If these thoughts sound bizarre, that's because they are. But the "philosophers" are out there thinking them and Borges fictional rendering of their implications is as interesting a presentation of these ideas as one is likely to run across.
Another major theme of Borges thinking, and perhaps the most representative expression of his view of reality, centers on the notion of Labyrinths. For him, the mystery of reality can be best summarized by as a grand labyrinth. It is a puzzle which gives the appearance of reason/order to those trapped within its confines but which in truth is nothing more than an elaborate game. What does one accomplish upon reaching the center of a labyrinth? Is there indeed any purpose at all to the journey? And yet how can a man help but attempt it? Yet ultimately there is no meaning behind the movement; only the appearance of meaning; truly a torturous state for humans to find themselves in. But then again, that's where the modern quest has left us all at present. Final verdict: interesting but not amazing. Intensely cerebral fiction and so probably not to the taste of everyone; but short enough to make some dabbling in the work worthwhile.
Another major theme of Borges thinking, and perhaps the most representative expression of his view of reality, centers on the notion of Labyrinths. For him, the mystery of reality can be best summarized by as a grand labyrinth. It is a puzzle which gives the appearance of reason/order to those trapped within its confines but which in truth is nothing more than an elaborate game. What does one accomplish upon reaching the center of a labyrinth? Is there indeed any purpose at all to the journey? And yet how can a man help but attempt it? Yet ultimately there is no meaning behind the movement; only the appearance of meaning; truly a torturous state for humans to find themselves in. But then again, that's where the modern quest has left us all at present. Final verdict: interesting but not amazing. Intensely cerebral fiction and so probably not to the taste of everyone; but short enough to make some dabbling in the work worthwhile.
October 24, 2021
It's eighty-one years since the earliest of these stories was published in Spanish, fifty-eight since they appeared in English. Academic critics have spent years or decades studying them. What could I, an ordinary reader, possibly have to say about this collection that won't have been said before? The answer is 'zilch', of course. Consequently, these notes are merely an aide memoire to my reading and offer no original insight.
In my preferred reading, it all begins with Kafka and Borges. Calvino, Perec, Sebald - they all tip their caps to these two masters. For me, the early Borges stories constitute an ur-text, tales to be consulted again and again. Borges was fascinated with immortality and in the composition of these short tales, he discovered the closest thing to it.
My bookshelves have long possessed two volumes of Borges's works, Ficciones and Labyrinths. Borges had been largely ignored by the English-speaking world (now there's a surprise, isn't it?). In 1962, two overlapping collections arrived, an event that must surely have amused the author. Both collections were translated by collectives, the former dominated by Anthony Kerrigan, the latter to a lesser extent by James Irby (it's telling that neither man rates his own page in the English language Wikipedia). I have to say, I find Kerrigan's translations the more elegant, notwithstanding the appearance of a third collection translated by Andrew Hurley (also on my shelves). Perhaps, one day, there will be an infinite number of translations. Ficciones comprises The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) and Artifices (1944). Labyrinths takes selections from Ficciones and from El Aleph (1949), adding to them a number of early essays and 'parables' from the collection El Hacedore (1960). In so doing, the Irby and Yates collection omits The South, unforgivably, in my opinion.
Labyrinths, libraries, the infinite, eternity, death, dreams, unreality, repetition, heresiarchs, demiurges, big cats, secret societies, crime fiction, the bible, the Koran, Quixote, Shakespeare, Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer... These are some of the materials out of which Borges spins his yarns of the fantastic and the metaphysical. A condemned man asks God for one more year to write his masterwork, with unforeseen consequences (it's clearly one of those demiurges who took the call). A man sleeps among ancient sacred ruins to dream alive a son. Again, the results are unpredictable. An academic rewrites three chapters of The Quixote by living out the process of its construction. It is identical word-for-word to the original but is better than Cervantes' version. An apparently simple boy learns that his memory is infinite. A librarian (Borges's day job) works in an infinite building in which all books are possible but most constitute random gibberish (Borges surely foresaw the internet-assisted rise of self-publishing).
There are stories here that would earn the collection five stars by themselves, even if the remainder were garbage, which they're not, of course. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Lottery in Babylon, Funes the Memorius, Death and the Compass... ah, what works! Imagine having written just one of those. I do feel that there's an ever-so-slight dropping off of the consistency in El Aleph (the title tale of which is omitted, for some reason). The Immortal, The Zahir and The Waiting are all classic Borges, though.
Borges never wrote a 1000-page work, not for him the Great Argentine Novel - all the better for us and our literary indolence. Besides which, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius achieves more than most books fifty times its length. I like to think of Borges as being that little bit too laid back to bother with the writing of novels, having too much fun hanging out with Adolfo Bioy Casares, Victoria and Silvina Ocampo.
It's worth noting what a remarkable effort has been made to describe the book on its Goodreads page. One of the editors is James Yerby and it merely contains a list of the contents, lacking correct capitalisation and with some howlers: Tiön, uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Emmas Zunz, The Zhir! I'm not worthy to be a Goodreads librarian, apparently, so I don't think I can correct it.
Many people use the internet for relentless self-promotion, so why should I be any different? Here's my tribute: The Brief Literary Career of Lewis Burgess. You could even increase its woeful 'like' count!
In my preferred reading, it all begins with Kafka and Borges. Calvino, Perec, Sebald - they all tip their caps to these two masters. For me, the early Borges stories constitute an ur-text, tales to be consulted again and again. Borges was fascinated with immortality and in the composition of these short tales, he discovered the closest thing to it.
My bookshelves have long possessed two volumes of Borges's works, Ficciones and Labyrinths. Borges had been largely ignored by the English-speaking world (now there's a surprise, isn't it?). In 1962, two overlapping collections arrived, an event that must surely have amused the author. Both collections were translated by collectives, the former dominated by Anthony Kerrigan, the latter to a lesser extent by James Irby (it's telling that neither man rates his own page in the English language Wikipedia). I have to say, I find Kerrigan's translations the more elegant, notwithstanding the appearance of a third collection translated by Andrew Hurley (also on my shelves). Perhaps, one day, there will be an infinite number of translations. Ficciones comprises The Garden of Forking Paths (1941) and Artifices (1944). Labyrinths takes selections from Ficciones and from El Aleph (1949), adding to them a number of early essays and 'parables' from the collection El Hacedore (1960). In so doing, the Irby and Yates collection omits The South, unforgivably, in my opinion.
Labyrinths, libraries, the infinite, eternity, death, dreams, unreality, repetition, heresiarchs, demiurges, big cats, secret societies, crime fiction, the bible, the Koran, Quixote, Shakespeare, Berkeley, Hume, Schopenhauer... These are some of the materials out of which Borges spins his yarns of the fantastic and the metaphysical. A condemned man asks God for one more year to write his masterwork, with unforeseen consequences (it's clearly one of those demiurges who took the call). A man sleeps among ancient sacred ruins to dream alive a son. Again, the results are unpredictable. An academic rewrites three chapters of The Quixote by living out the process of its construction. It is identical word-for-word to the original but is better than Cervantes' version. An apparently simple boy learns that his memory is infinite. A librarian (Borges's day job) works in an infinite building in which all books are possible but most constitute random gibberish (Borges surely foresaw the internet-assisted rise of self-publishing).
There are stories here that would earn the collection five stars by themselves, even if the remainder were garbage, which they're not, of course. Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, The Lottery in Babylon, Funes the Memorius, Death and the Compass... ah, what works! Imagine having written just one of those. I do feel that there's an ever-so-slight dropping off of the consistency in El Aleph (the title tale of which is omitted, for some reason). The Immortal, The Zahir and The Waiting are all classic Borges, though.
Borges never wrote a 1000-page work, not for him the Great Argentine Novel - all the better for us and our literary indolence. Besides which, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius achieves more than most books fifty times its length. I like to think of Borges as being that little bit too laid back to bother with the writing of novels, having too much fun hanging out with Adolfo Bioy Casares, Victoria and Silvina Ocampo.
It's worth noting what a remarkable effort has been made to describe the book on its Goodreads page. One of the editors is James Yerby and it merely contains a list of the contents, lacking correct capitalisation and with some howlers: Tiön, uqbar, Orbis Tertius, Emmas Zunz, The Zhir! I'm not worthy to be a Goodreads librarian, apparently, so I don't think I can correct it.
Many people use the internet for relentless self-promotion, so why should I be any different? Here's my tribute: The Brief Literary Career of Lewis Burgess. You could even increase its woeful 'like' count!
April 27, 2020
Eine gute Auswahl aus dem Werk von Borges. In der Ausgabe von Fischer Klassik wird auf eine Sortierung der einzelnen Texte nach Genre verzichtet. Die Anordnung der Gedichte, Erzählungen und Essays wurde mehr nach thematischen Übereinstimmungen vorgenommen. Ganz im Geiste von Borges ergibt das den schönen Nebeneffekt, dass die Grenze zwischen Fiktion und Wirklichkeit öfters verschwimmt. Erzählungen lesen sich wie Essays und Essays lesen sich wie Erzählungen. Stilistisch kamen mir Borges Texte eher spröde und karg vor. Sie erschließen sich einem vornehmlich auf analytischer, denn auf emotionaler Ebene. Eine ungewöhnliche Symbiose aus Metaphysik und Phantastik, durchaus anspruchsvoll, aber auch mit hoher Anziehungskraft. Regt zum Nachdenken und Wiederlesen an.
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September 1, 2014للتحميل
المرايا والمتاهات
خورخي لويس بورخيس
المرايا والمتاهات
خورخي لويس بورخيس
April 10, 2019
البورخس مالبورخس و ما ادراک مالبورخس
به شیوه دکتر درون گرا :D
به شیوه دکتر درون گرا :D
December 4, 2013
My first Borges book, or shall I say, "My first Borges experience!"
Labyrinths is broken down to three sections: Fictions, Essays, and Parables. It starts complicated enough with the first story, and despite the false appearance to grow simpler, it gets more complicated as the book progresses. These are not short stories; these are conundrums blending fact, fiction, reality, and dreams. I cannot begin to fathom the amount of research that went to his stories, as even today, with the World Wide Web it would have taken me years to find and understand the vast amount of 'data' he throws around as if nothing. Jorge Luis Borges was a genius, a mad genius.
There were times when, while reading the book, I did not know whether to continue reading or whether to blow my head off. The only other book that made me feel this way was Anacalypsis by Sir Godfrey Higgins. Borges masterfully manipulates dream-like states and combines them with historical facts, mind-boggling revelations, and all this while looking at things from angles one would normally not consider. To be honest, I'm not even sure I understood this book completely (if that is even possible) but I already know I'll have to reread it.
There were stories and essays that made me question my own sanity, my own understanding of the world. There were beautiful stories that I read twice (The Library of Babel; The Secret Miracle; The Immortal; Deutsches Requiem; The Zahir). And then there were pieces that just blew me away and left me puzzled (The wall and the Books; A New Refutation of Time, for example).
In the end, I feel I have nothing new to say about this book that has not been said before. I'm left perplexed, yet strangely satisfied. I'm left wondering while my mind wanders, hungry for more yet unable to swallow one more morsel for fear of exploding. This will not be my favorite book of all time, it will not go down as the most memorable read of the year either...but...Borges, you shook my world in a profound, inexplicable way.
Labyrinths is broken down to three sections: Fictions, Essays, and Parables. It starts complicated enough with the first story, and despite the false appearance to grow simpler, it gets more complicated as the book progresses. These are not short stories; these are conundrums blending fact, fiction, reality, and dreams. I cannot begin to fathom the amount of research that went to his stories, as even today, with the World Wide Web it would have taken me years to find and understand the vast amount of 'data' he throws around as if nothing. Jorge Luis Borges was a genius, a mad genius.
There were times when, while reading the book, I did not know whether to continue reading or whether to blow my head off. The only other book that made me feel this way was Anacalypsis by Sir Godfrey Higgins. Borges masterfully manipulates dream-like states and combines them with historical facts, mind-boggling revelations, and all this while looking at things from angles one would normally not consider. To be honest, I'm not even sure I understood this book completely (if that is even possible) but I already know I'll have to reread it.
There were stories and essays that made me question my own sanity, my own understanding of the world. There were beautiful stories that I read twice (The Library of Babel; The Secret Miracle; The Immortal; Deutsches Requiem; The Zahir). And then there were pieces that just blew me away and left me puzzled (The wall and the Books; A New Refutation of Time, for example).
In the end, I feel I have nothing new to say about this book that has not been said before. I'm left perplexed, yet strangely satisfied. I'm left wondering while my mind wanders, hungry for more yet unable to swallow one more morsel for fear of exploding. This will not be my favorite book of all time, it will not go down as the most memorable read of the year either...but...Borges, you shook my world in a profound, inexplicable way.
October 1, 2015
This is the first Borges book I ever read. Since then, of course, he's died and all of his short stories have been collected in English. Mike Miley, the person who spends more money on books than anyone I've ever known (and is very generous in sharing them), purchased that complete collection, bringing it up to the cottage in Michigan during his last visit. When I saw it amidst Michael's travel bags (a small one for clothes, a big one for books and papers) I immediately asked if I could have at it. Permission granted, I probably got through the whole thing--and it's long--in a couple of evenings and nights by the wood-burning stove. Thus, all of the Labyrinths stories have been read at least twice now.
What I particularly like about Borges is his creative erudition. Not only is he good at mimicking the style, say, of a early sixteenth century Spanish bureaucrat, but he cleverly mingles the real with the fantastical in his often copious references, notes and asides. It makes one wonder who is to be credited for the technique which is also employed by the American authors James Branch Cabell and H.P. Lovecraft.
P.S. Borges visited Loyola University shortly before his death in the eighties, speaking in its chapel--perhaps the only event I ever attended there.
What I particularly like about Borges is his creative erudition. Not only is he good at mimicking the style, say, of a early sixteenth century Spanish bureaucrat, but he cleverly mingles the real with the fantastical in his often copious references, notes and asides. It makes one wonder who is to be credited for the technique which is also employed by the American authors James Branch Cabell and H.P. Lovecraft.
P.S. Borges visited Loyola University shortly before his death in the eighties, speaking in its chapel--perhaps the only event I ever attended there.
August 19, 2012
Mind-blowingly awesome. I only wish that for the first book that I read of Borges that it was either all short stories or all essays; I had difficulty making the transition from the last story to the first essay because the lyrical cadence of his writing style made his beautifully written essays seem almost fictive. The parables at the very end of the compilation were the cherries on top. Borges' love of all things Quixote makes me want to hunker down with that book and read, re-read, and re-re-read it until it has the mantric effect that it apparently had on him. Dostoevsky made me want to learn Russian to read him in his native language - Borges has the same effect on me w.r.t. Spanish. I'm reminded yet again how embarrassing it is to be an American monoglot.
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